


Now Take It From the Top

by stilitana



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Chronic Illness, Developing Friendships, Dysfunctional Family, Found Family, Identity Issues, Moral Dilemmas, Multi, Post-Canon, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23344897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilitana/pseuds/stilitana
Summary: The crew of the Urania get a crash course in the powers and perils of friendship, close encounters of the fifth kind, and the transient nature of memory during their express flight back to Earth. And also, music.
Relationships: (past/implied) Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler, Doug Eiffel/Hera, Isabel Lovelace/Renée Minkowski, Renée Minkowski & Hera & Isabel Lovelace & Daniel Jacobi & Doug Eiffel
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35





	1. retrograde

**Author's Note:**

> Hello dear reader--I'm a couple years late to the party, but I just finished this podcast and it broke my heart. When that happens, I have to write something, whether anybody else wants to hear a story or not. On the slim chance that you do, here it is.
> 
> As always, comments and critique are very appreciated! Feel free to find me on tumblr @[stilitana](https://stilitana.tumblr.com/). I hope you enjoy, and thank you for reading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear reader--I'm a couple years late to the party, but I just finished this podcast and it broke my heart. When that happens, I have to write something, whether anybody else wants to hear a story or not. On the slim chance that you do, here it is.
> 
> As always, comments and critique are very appreciated! Feel free to find me on tumblr @stilitana. I hope you enjoy, and thank you for reading.

> "'But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves.'
> 
> 'Because they have no memory,' he dejectedly replied; 'because they are not human.'"
> 
> —Herman Melville, _Benito Cereno_

The Urania went roaring through space with force enough to rend any flesh and blood creature apart by the infinitesimal gaps between its quarks. Cradled from the violence of their departure within the ship’s cabin, the crew felt it hum and shudder. Minkowski shifted in her seat, trying to relieve the ache in her middle, as though she might somehow find a position that let her forgot she was healing from a bullet wound. Beside her, Eiffel shivered and sat very still. His stillness was unnerving. It wasn’t like him. He wasn’t like anything, anymore. When he caught her staring at him, he gave her the bland, polite smile he’d been plastering across his face whenever any of them looked his way. It was a smile that seemed to say, _I come in peace, just please don’t hurt me_. 

She forced herself not to look away. She owed it to him not to turn away from him now. “So. When we get back, you said there are some people you need to see?” 

He nodded, hesitant, as though unsure if he’d said something wrong. “I think so. I don’t...I don’t know. Hera let me read my file, so I know what he—what I—and I guess I’ll have to do something.” 

“Eiffel.” 

“Yes, Renée?” 

“You know we’re all not just going to abandon each other, once we get to Earth, right?” 

“Well, I—of course not. I guess? It seems like people have—lives, to get back to. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” 

“You can stick with me for as long as you want. I want—I need you to understand that. I know you don’t know me, but—but understand that much, okay? Whatever you need, anything I can do, once we’re on Earth—and that goes for you, too, Hera. I may not be your Commander anymore once we’re back, but you’re still my team. And I’ll always be here for my team. Got it?” 

“That’s...really nice of you.” 

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she just nodded. 

Eiffel cleared his throat. “I guess we were all...pretty close?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, we were.” 

“Even though, from the tapes, it sounds like we didn’t always exactly...get along.” 

“Family doesn’t always get along. But it’s still family.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t remember.” 

“Eiffel, that’s...that’s not something to be sorry about. Someone did tell you what...happened, right? About why you don’t remember, what you did?” 

“Something about...saving the world?” he said, with a nervous, uncomfortable little laugh that was at once familiar and alien. Just like everything about him now. 

“Yeah.” 

“It’s just that I—never mind.” 

“No, tell me.” 

“Um. It’s nothing. Not important.” 

“Eiffel...” 

“I feel really—bad? Like I’ve done something, or forgotten to do something, or—like something terrible’s going to—or already—like I feel all this, I don’t know, guilt, or dread, or whatever, but I can’t tell why or where it’s coming from, and that’s--but it doesn’t matter. Like I said. Not important.” 

“It is, though, if it’s bothering you. Look, Eiffel, we’ve...we’ve all been through a lot. Understatement of the century, I know. And even though you don’t remember exactly what it all was, you’ve still been through it. Sometimes our bodies remember things we think we’ve forgotten. We’ve been living in an almost constant life-or-death scenario for a few weeks now—hell, even before that. That takes a toll.” 

“But if I don’t even remember, what right have I got to feel any of that?” 

“What kind of question is that? It’s not about who has the _right_ to be traumatized by what we’ve all been through. I wish forgetting might at least have made this part a little easier on you, but I guess that’s just not how people work. You don’t exist in a constant state of fight-or-flight for months on end and walk out the other side of that without some...well, issues to work through. We’re all in the same boat there. We’re in this together, okay?” 

“I’m sure we’ve all got _quite_ the arsenal of debriefings and psych evals waiting for us when we get back,” said Hera. 

“Ugh, don’t remind me. I’m trying to focus on the _good_ parts about getting back, and not the absolute shitstorm we’re flying towards.” 

“Are we...in trouble, or something?” said Eiffel. 

“It’s safe to assume that we’re always in some kind of trouble,” said Hera. “It’s sort of our thing.” 

“Oh, they haven’t even _seen_ trouble yet. We’re bringing the trouble to them. Goddard better be ready,” said Minkowski. 

“Commander...what you said about family. How literally are we willing to interpret that?” said Hera. 

“Huh?” 

“Well. When we get back, I’ll still, technically, _belong_ to them.” 

“ _Belong_ to them?” said Eiffel, brows scrunched. 

“Oh, god, Hera. I’m not going to let anybody—no. No, we’ll take care of that. We have time to come up with a plan. We’ll go into orbit and nobody will leave this ship until we’ve come up with something, if that’s what it takes.” 

“Actually, I’ve sort of got a jumpstart on the whole plan thing?” 

“Oh. You do?” 

“Yes. It involves...a transfer of responsibilities.” 

“You mean... _buying_ you?” 

“Um, _no_. Let’s go with more like assuming legal guardianship? At least until I can work out some way to get full independence.” 

“So...sort of like an adoption?” 

“Something like that.” 

“And that would work?” 

“I started looking into it around the time Captain Lovelace first showed up. I couldn’t leave with you _then_ , not on her ship, but I was—curious. It was something we’d talked about before, you know, what we’d do, when we—if we were on Earth, and then we actually had a feasible escape plan for a second there with the Sol, and we didn’t have a lot of time to work things out in detail, but I already proposed the idea and got the process started with—but. But I can walk you through it now. If that’s all right.” 

Hera’s voice sped up as she spoke, a faint electronic clipping beneath the words as though they were getting snagged. 

“Oh. I...of course, Hera. Of course.” 

“Wait, sorry, so—the evil space company we work for owns you? Isn’t that—fucked up, though?” 

“Yes, Eiffel, it is.” 

“I mean, that’s--that’s wrong. Like, really wrong!” 

“ _Yes_ , Eiffel. That’s why we started working on this plan.” 

“Oh. Well...good. It seems like you’ve really thought of everything, Renée.” 

“This is...the first I’m hearing about this.” 

“Huh?” 

“When I say ‘ _we_ ,’ Eiffel, I mean _us_ . _We_ talked about this plan. _We’ve_ had this conversation before, about a hundred times.” 

“Oh. Um...okay? That’s...good?” 

Hera laughed. The sound came through in a sharp burst of static. Eiffel winced. “Yeah, it was.” 

“Right. Sorry that I guess I’ve sort of...set you back a little, then.” 

“That’s not what I—that's not what I meant.” 

“Oh, okay, well—sorry, maybe there’s--maybe there’s something I’m just misunderstanding.” 

Hera paused for a beat, and then said, “There’s nothing to understand. Don’t worry about it.” 

“Hera, I know this isn’t easy, but he’s--” 

“Trying, Commander? I know. Of course I know that, because it’s--him.” 

“I’m sorry,” said Eiffel. “I didn’t mean to...I don’t know. Upset you.” 

“Upset me? I’m not upset. _Upset_?” 

“Hera, you need to—” 

“Calm down? Do I? Are you going to tell me to _calm down_ , Commander?” 

“Hera...” 

“In case you haven’t noticed, you’re breathing right now! The ship is moving and all systems are nominal! So excuse me for thinking it was safe for me to have feelings, like the rest of the crew does, all the time.” 

Minkowski glanced at Eiffel, who was wearing a very familiar expression, as though someone were tying his organs in knots. He eased out of his chair and inched towards the door. “I’ll just...give you some space,” he mumbled. 

“Space? You’ll give _me_ some space?” said Hera. “That’s one thing you’d think we have plenty of, but no, not me! I’ll still be constantly aware of where every single one of you are, because you are literally walking around inside me right now!” 

“Oh, god, I’m sorry...” 

“Stop apologizing, Eiffel, and _go away_!” 

Eiffel squeaked and hurried out the door, which sealed behind him. Minkowski sat in the silence that wasn’t exactly quiet, full as it was with Hera’s thrumming energy, which practically left the air feeling electrified. 

“Well. If he wasn’t already feeling totally lost and confused, he sure is now, Hera.” 

Hera gave a half-strangled scream. “You think I don’t know that? Who was it who _erased_ his mind? Who was linked up to his brain while every single one of his memories was just—just—and I could feel it happening, it was like—it was like that stupid, _horrible_ movie he used to always make jokes about, the _Space Odyssey_ , except this time _he_ was the computer, and I was the person— _deleting_ him, and I could feel him going, and I could feel him feeling himself going, and I don’t get to forget that!” 

“Hera...” 

Hera made a sound that was an awful like a wrenching sob, and Minkowski felt her heart breaking a little more. She hadn’t known there was anything left to break, but there it was. 

“And you—you just sit there, saying all these, these kind, heartfelt things, about how we’re a family, and we’re all going to be together forever and live happily ever after on Earth, and you’re--you’re a liar!” 

“Hey! Hera, for as long as we’re on this ship, I’m still your commanding officer, and I—” 

“Why did he get to say goodbye to _you_?” Hera said, her voice distorted. “And Lovelace? And you—you sent him away, you sent him away all alone, on the Sol, as if that was your call to make, and didn’t even—didn't even think to let anybody say goodbye! And then he was back, and it didn’t matter anyway, because we still didn’t. And now we never will.” 

“Hera, you _know_ why I thought that was the right thing to do, at the time. I’m not going to say that it really was—I admit that it was probably a mistake. But to act like I intended to purposefully harm you or Eiffel, that is—just plain wrong, and you know it.” 

“It’s like you’re not listening! You don’t understand anything, just—just leave me alone!” 

“Fine. When you’re ready to talk and behave like a mature, responsible member of this crew, you just let me know, Hera! Take your time!” 

Hera gave a frustrated groan, and then all the comms in the room shut down at once, leaving Minkowski’s ears ringing as the sudden, fuzzy silence pressed down on her. She groaned and put her head in her hands. She waited, but no tears came. 

Eiffel wandered through the ship with no destination in mind. Although he couldn’t remember a day of basic training, the sort he assumed he must have gone through before being sent into space, he found himself undisturbed by the lack of gravity. He was by no means graceful, but he thought that could be put down to natural clumsiness more so than disorientation. His body reacted before his mind; hands instinctively reaching out to nudge himself away from the walls, to grab onto handholds and doorways to anchor himself. He thought of what Renée had said, that the body remembers. Was that supposed to be comforting? 

It made him feel less like a living person and more like a haunted house. His body was rickety and run-down, weak and achy and marked with signs of injury and ill-health. Wounds he couldn’t remember receiving but which his body kept score of. Who was inside him, remembering all of that? When they looked at him, they saw somebody else, some ghost trapped inside of him. 

Eiffel shivered. There was something sterile about the ship’s recycled air, something which brought to mind hospital rooms. He couldn’t remember ever having been in a hospital room, but he had the concept of one, and somewhere in his mind there was apparently a whole heap of associations which hadn’t vanished just because he couldn’t remember where they’d come from. The chill went right through his jumpsuit, even though whatever material it was made of seemed like it should have kept him well-insulated. He rubbed his hands up and down his arms, but it didn’t help. He was always cold. His body was thin, almost frail-looking. Sometimes he got pins and needles in his fingers and toes, a horrible creeping numbness, as though he were turning invisible. Had he always felt like that? Did everyone? 

The acoustics of the ship had an odd muffling effect, and so he didn’t hear Jacobi and Lovelace until he floated into the engine room on the lower deck and found them doing...something. Something involving tools, and big, complicated machines. 

He could still operate most of the comms equipment, as long as he didn’t get too into his head, and let his hands do the thinking for him. Muscle memory had directed him into the comms room almost at once. So he had to assume that his lack of understanding of how most of the rest of the ship worked wasn’t a result of memory loss. He had to wonder how he hadn’t known, hadn’t at least suspected, that there was some shady ulterior motive for sending him into space. Surely there had to plenty of highly qualified people who knew how to work a radio? But maybe he just hadn’t cared. Maybe it just hadn’t felt like much of a choice. Maybe he _had_ suspected, but winding up an unwilling guinea pig for some deadly viral experimentation had felt like exactly what he deserved. It was no use wondering. The answer, if he’d ever known it, was gone. 

“So. Anywhere in mind for your big holiday?” Jacobi was saying, up to his elbows working in the ship’s innards. 

“I don’t know yet.” 

“Disney World, huh? That sounds like the exact opposite of relaxing to me, but hey, you do you.” 

“I’ve never been.” 

“Me, neither. Not really my thing.” 

“What? You mean tacky tourist attractions aren’t your thing? Man, did I have you pegged all wrong,” Lovelace said, floating beside him and holding a bag across her lap, into which she intermittently reached to hand him something. 

“They do have that big fireworks show, though. Eh...I’ll bet they don’t even let you get up close though. I’ve probably seen better. Oh, hey, Eiffel. Ever been to Disney?” 

“Oh, sure. All the time.” 

“Really? There you go, Lovelace, you can get the full Yelp review right—hey. Eiffel?” 

“Uh-huh?” 

“You’ve...been to Disney?” 

“Why do you sound so shocked?” said Lovelace. “Maybe tacky tourist traps aren’t your thing, but don’t tell me you can’t see him—oh. Wait a minute. Eiffel, really? You have been? Like, you—remember that?” 

“Uh...so. That was supposed to be a joke, but I think judging by the looks on your faces, it...wasn’t.” 

“Hilarious,” Jacobi said, rolling his eyes and turning his attention back to his work. 

“Same stellar sense of humor,” Lovelace muttered. “Some things never change.” 

“Come on, you made it too easy for me, you set it up and everything. I couldn’t not.” 

“Same incredible self-control, too.” 

“I’ll just let you guys get back to...well, whatever you’re doing.” 

“Hey, wait. You can hang out, if you want.” 

“He _can_?” Jacobi groused. 

“You’re not bothering us, or anything.” 

“He’s _not_?” 

Lovelace gave him a light punch on the arm. Jacobi gave an exaggerated yelp of pain and glared at her. 

“Don’t listen to him. He’s a big softie on the inside, trust me.” 

“That’s just a clever ploy to make you comfortable. I’m only biding my time.” 

Eiffel found himself grinning. There was still an awful lot of tension in the room, and his own rattled nerves making him feel awkward around these strangers who called him family but looked at him sometimes as though they’d seen a ghost. But still--it made him happy, seeing the two of them like that, at ease, teasing each other. It made him feel lighter inside, in a way that had nothing to do with the lack of gravity. 

“What’s up, anyway?” Lovelace said. “Exploring the ship? Minkowski already putting you to work?” 

“Not...exactly? She and Hera sort of...I think they needed a minute. To...talk about some things.” 

“And when you say talk, you mean they’re having a full-on shouting match right now, right?” said Lovelace. 

“Did you guys know apparently Goddard, like, _owns_ Hera? And thinks they could just, what, repossess her along with the ship, like a—like a used car, or something?” 

“If you’re asking if I’m aware of our corporate overlords’ complete and utter lack of anything approaching morality, then yes,” said Jacobi. 

“They’re probably going to try to pull the same shit with us,” said Lovelace. “Remember, we’re all supposed to be dead. They’re not gonna be keen on us returning from the grave.” 

“What’re you thinking for initial offers in exchange for non-disclosure agreements?” 

“I’m thinking they can take that shit straight to hell, and they will be, when I’m done with them.” 

“So--so what’s gonna happen to us?” Eiffel said. “Are we...are they gonna put us in jail, or something? I mean, are we criminals?” 

Lovelace snorted. “They can try.” 

“No laws in space, baby,” Jacobi deadpanned. “Which isn’t true at all, you know, but hey. Final frontier, and all.” 

“Right...” said Eiffel. 

“Don’t you worry, kiddo. Out of all of us besides Hera, I’m pretty sure you’re the most off the hook as far as the worst of what went down. I mean, you don’t have a body count, at least. And you can pull the amnesia card,” said Jacobi. 

“O...kay?” 

“We don’t have to worry about how exactly we’re going to burn Goddard to the ground just yet, so can we not?” said Lovelace. 

“Thoughts of ruthless revenge getting your blood pressure up, Captain?” 

“Isn’t Renée’s husband a journalist? Maybe we could—talk to some people on Earth, get the story straight before we even show up? I mean, there has to be somebody who’d help us. Goddard can’t just get away with all this, right? Not if the right people know about it. Or just people in general, if they feel strongly enough about it.” 

“Spoken like a comms officer,” said Jacobi. “Sure, let’s talk our way out of it. Because that’s worked so well for us in the past.” 

“How do you know about Minkowski’s husband? Did she tell you that?” Lovelace said. 

“Er...lucky guess?” 

“Nuh-uh. Not buying that, try again.” 

“I...may have read some files.” 

“What kind of files?” 

“The—the crew files! I asked Hera if I could read anything she could show me, and she said yes, so—yeah.” 

“You read our files?” Lovelace said. 

“There wasn’t anything—anything super personal in there, I promise. Hera said she only showed me things I would’ve known about anyway. And no, not your files, she only had the ones for our crew.” 

“You could’ve just asked Minkowski, you know. If you wanted to...get to know her.” 

“I’m sure I could. She’s been—really nice, you all have. But...I didn’t want to bother her.” 

“That’s a new one, coming from you.” 

“See, I don’t know what that means. I mean, I do, because I listened to the tapes, but it’s not the same as remembering, and I think—it was just easier. I didn’t want to make her...I don’t know, sad, or something.” 

“It’s okay, Eiffel. I get it,” said Lovelace. “Nobody here can claim to be above snooping in sensitive personal files, isn’t that right?” she said, nudging Jacobi. 

“Never again,” he said, shuddering. “That way lies chaos.” 

“Attention, Urania crew,” said Hera. “The Commander wants you all to be at dinner in fifteen minutes.” 

“What? We’re all eating dinner together now?” said Jacobi. 

“Apparently, _you_ are.” 

“Hey, Hera, are you—” 

“Dinner in fifteen, Officer Eiffel,” she said. 

Eiffel could hear the dismissal in her voice. Even though he knew she was still listening— because she couldn’t help but listen, could she?—he let it go. 

“Damn. What’d you do to Hera?” Lovelace said. 

“I...don’t really know.” 

“Eh, I’m sure she’s just got a couple wires crossed from arguing with Minkowski.” 

“Should you be saying that? She can—still hear us, can’t she?” said Eiffel. 

“It took you about a hundred and two days to get that through your head the first time! Let’s see if we can’t break that record this time around, shall we, Officer Eiffel?” 

“Hera, I—did I do something?” 

“You? Do something? No, Eiffel.” 

“Oh...okay, then...you just seem a little...” 

“A little...what?” 

“Mad?” 

“Do I? Hm. Noted.” 

“Hera, seriously, what did he do? ‘Cause if Minkowski’s giving you a hard time, I get it, but do we have to take it out on Eiffel? Give the guy a couple days before he settles back into his role as resident punching bag, at least,” said Lovelace. “It only seems fair.” 

“I’m glad you’re all so able to compartmentalize. Really, it’s great. Since my feelings are apparently an _inconvenience_ to the crew, I’m going to try to do the same, so help me help you, and stop asking me silly questions, okay? Thank you!” 

“Jesus,” Jacobi muttered. “Is this dinner thing mandatory? I don’t know how much of this I can take. I was sort of thinking I’d lock myself in my room and cry myself to sleep early tonight.” 

“Chin up, soldier. Best not to resist Minkowski when she’s on the crew-bonding warpath. It’ll only prolong the torments,” said Lovelace. 

“Are we all, like...not okay?” said Eiffel. 

“Look who’s starting to catch on!” said Jacobi. “Quick learner. Keep that up and you might just get yourself promoted. How’s court jester in chief sound?” 

I don’t understand you people, Eiffel didn’t say. I don’t understand the way you talk to each other, the things you say, the things you don’t say. I wish someone would stop wisecracking for one minute and tell me where the hell I’m supposed to fit into all this mess. I wish you’d all just stop and explain some things to me, like are we friends, or enemies, or just coworkers, or family like you’re trying to convince me we are, and is everyone like this? And am I ever going to understand or feel comfortable and like I belong somewhere, anywhere, ever again? And did I ever? Here, with you? 

“Dinner sounds good,” said Eiffel. “I think I’m hungry.” 

Minkowski prepared the mess for four. Not that there was much to prepare. Among the many, many things she would not miss about being in space, it was the not-exactly-fine dining. 

She was trying not to think so much about the things she would miss. 

Her crew was running late. She opened her mouth to snap a question at Hera about where they all were, and then stopped herself. She drummed her fingers on the table. She inspected her nails. She tried not to think. If she thought, she’d start to imagine the future, and she was trying not to get too ahead of herself these days. One minute at a time. 

The three missing members of her ramshackle crew all entered at once, talking and laughing. 

“And that’s how I got banned from ever entering a Bass Pro Shop again,” said Jacobi. Lovelace snorted in laughter and Eiffel grinned and beamed at him as though he thought Jacobi was the coolest guy to ever have a track record of extensive property damage. Minkowski had seen it all before. Eiffel had been head over heels with admiration for Lovelace before they ever met her, when she was only a voice in a recording. He wore that look often when talking to, or about, Hera. He’d once looked at her like that. Like she hung the stars and held them all in place. 

Was he just naturally prone to idolizing people, then? Or was this a remnant, some small trace of her Eiffel showing through? Some part of him that he couldn’t remember, but which was still there? 

Or maybe she was getting sentimental. 

“Hey, Minkowski. How’re you hanging in there?” said Lovelace. 

“Just fine, Lovelace. And yourself?” 

“Peachy. Picking any fights lately? Any potential dissent among the ranks you wanna fill us in on?” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“Oh, nothing. I’m sure whatever’s going on between you guys and Hera, you’ve got it totally under control.” 

“ _Nothing_ is going on.” 

“M-hm. So nothing is why Eiffel said you guys were having a fight.” 

“I did not.” 

“Seriously, Eiffel?” said Minkowski, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Someone had to be a professional. “We aren’t having a fight, it’s just—perfectly understandable tension. I’m sure every one of us can relate to feeling...not quite ourselves, right now.” 

“That’s putting it delicately,” said Lovelace. 

“Not me,” said Jacobi. “I’m totally fine. I had Goddard go in and cauterize my emotions a long time ago. Best decision ever, seriously.” 

“If hiding behind sarcasm is how you have to get through this right now, fine,” said Minkowski. 

“I’m not hiding, I'm just like this.” 

“Sure. Okay. You’re completely fine with being stuck here, on this ship, with all of us, until we get back to Earth. Just like how Lovelace was totally fine being stuck on the Hephaestus, with a brand new crew full of strangers where her own people used to—” 

“Stop,” Jacobi said, a hard edge of warning in his voice. He looked down, forcing his tone back to its usual deadpan register. “You don’t have to rub it in.” 

“I’m not trying to. I’m just saying...I know this isn’t easy. On anybody. So let’s just...try and go easy on each other.” 

“Can I ask a question?” said Eiffel. 

“Only if you raise your hand first,” said Lovelace. 

“Yes, Eiffel, you can—you don’t have to raise your hand, put it down. What?” 

“Um...how long, exactly, until we get back? To Earth?” 

He smiled at her, a wincing expression, at once sheepish and apologetic, ingratiating and just a touch fearful, like a friendly hostage hedging his bets. It made her a little sick. Woozy with the sudden weight of her responsibility. 

“If nothing goes horrifically wrong? Should be about a month,” said Lovelace. 

“Praise be the VX5 engine,” said Jacobi, bringing his hands together. 

“Oh,” said Eiffel. “Huh.” 

“What?” said Minkowski. 

“Sorry, nothing.” 

“No, tell me.” 

“I was just thinking that I—I don’t really know how long that is.” 

There was a brief pause, just long enough to be noticeable, before Hera said, “About twenty-nine days, give or take.” 

Lovelace said, “Shouldn’t you know that?” 

“I do know—at least, I think I—never mind. Sorry. It wasn’t important.” 

“You don’t know how long a month...feels?” Hera said. 

“Um. Yeah. It’ll be like...the longest amount of time so far.” 

“Well,” Hera said, and was she always so chipper, or was there something brittle in her voice, as though it were about to crack? “I guess you’ll be experiencing a lot of things for the first time before we even get back to Earth, then! That's—that's sort of exciting, isn’t it, Officer Eiffel? Trying new things is—is fun, right?” 

Eiffel aimed his most polite, guileless smile into the air, casting around as if he’d find Hera standing somewhere in the room. It was the bland, clueless, helpless expression he’d been wearing a lot over the past few days. Minkowski did her best to force down the raw, ugly emotion it dredged up in her. 

“Of course,” he said. Amiable, disarmed. Minkowski could read body language with skill and ease—it was an important ability for a leader to have, especially one in as high-pressure and environment as a deep space station. And Eiffel’s screamed submission. He may as well have had his hands in the air, palms raised. _I come in peace, please don’t hurt me._ He’d always been passive, but this was...this was different, wasn’t it? Or had that defensive curl to his posture been there for longer? That instinctual flinch? At least after he’d been marooned—or even before that, when Hilbert had—or earlier still? From the beginning? Why didn’t she know? Why hadn’t she paid more attention, when she could, when it counted? 

“How does that work, anyway?” said Jacobi. 

“What, trying new things, or having fun?” said Lovelace. 

“Shut up. I mean the whole amnesia thing. Like, you can tie your shoes and speak English and all that, but you don’t know—I mean, you don’t remember...anything?” 

“Jacobi. Drop it,” said Minkowski, leveling a stern look his way. 

“Seriously? After all the shit that just went down, we’re back to this? It’s just a question, he doesn’t have to answer if he doesn’t want to.” 

“It’s only been—what, barely four days? You can’t give it a rest for four days, can’t keep the negativity and the picking on each other to a minimum for that long, after everything?” 

“I’m not being negative, and I’m not picking on anybody—Jesus, what is this, second grade? It was just an honest question. Not positive, not negative, not anything.” 

“Um...guys?” said Eiffel. 

“What?” Minkowski snapped. 

“I just, um...I don’t mind? The question, I mean. It doesn’t bother me or anything, if that’s what you’re, er, worried about. You don’t have to pretend like nothing happened, or act like it’s not weird. It’s okay. I would...I mean, it’s just—it's a little confusing, is all, when I can’t tell if you’re saying one thing, and maybe thinking another, so maybe it would be better if you did just...ask. If that’s...okay.” 

Minkowski made her face a careful mask of composure and tried to quell the ridiculous indignation, the little twinge of betrayal she felt. Just whose feelings was she trying to spare, exactly? If he was fine, then what was the problem? “Okay. Okay, Eiffel.” 

“So...” said Jacobi. “Is there, like, a reason for what you remember, or is it random, or...what?” 

“I don’t really know. Sorry.” 

“Memory is...complicated,” said Hera. “There are different kinds. Your implicit memory—the kind that’s pretty much unconscious, the sort that governs learned skills and behaviors, like speech, that seems...that’s still there. Then there’s explicit memory, which we generally group into two kinds: semantic, and episodic. It seems like you’ve exhibited some semantic recall—that's facts. Just facts, detached from...feelings about the facts, or memories of where you learned them, and when. I don’t know why some is there and some isn’t. Like I said, memory is tricky, and our understanding of it is still changing. Semantic memory is only half of the picture. The other half is episodic.” 

“And that is...?” 

“Those are your memories of personal experiences.” 

“So the kind that’s gone, then.” 

“Yes. The kind that’s gone.” 

Eiffel smiled at Jacobi. “Well, there you go. Good thing we’ve got a genius on board. Thanks, Hera.” 

Hera was quiet just long enough for it to be a noticeable pause. “You’re welcome, Eif—no. Please. Don’t thank me.” 

“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” 

“No. Yes. No, you—I'm s-sor-sorry, I—I need a moment. Please, everyone, you’ve all g-got-got-gottten a moment to—to yourselves, and now I want to be alone—please give me a moment to—” 

“It’s okay, Hera,” said Minkowski. 

Even without her having a physical body to walk out of the room with, and even knowing that her consciousness encompassed the entire ship at all times, there was still the impression that Hera had fled the room and left the door swishing shut behind her. Silence filled the room. 

“Is she okay?” said Eiffel. 

“Yes, Eiffel, she—we've all been through...a lot,” said Minkowski. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...I don’t know. I feel like I keep upsetting her.” 

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Minkowski, and all of a sudden she sounded exhausted, older than her years. 

The room felt cramped, his skin hot and flushed. He had the horrible feeling that he’d overstayed his welcome, and there it was again, the fear that was always one tick away from edging over into panic—the fear that he might screw up, that they would decide he was more trouble than he was worth, and abandon him while he still needed them desperately. “Is...is there anything I can do? To help?” 

“Not...right now.” 

“If—maybe if someone would just—just explain a few things to me, I wouldn’t keep messing up.” 

“What do you want explained, exactly?” said Lovelace. 

“Why is she—how come you guys—what am I doing wrong?” 

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” Minkowski said, her fists clenched in her lap, her jaw tense. 

“But then how come—” 

“You’re not doing anything _wrong_ , Eiffel, okay? It’s just that you look like somebody we cared about very much, but that person’s gone, and it’s not your fault that we’re not handling that very well, and it’s not fair that all that hurt is getting taken out on you, and it’s not okay, but it is what it is, so we’re all just going to have to try harder, and do better. Got it?” 

“I...got it, sir.” 

“Good. Wait. Sir?” 

“What?” 

“You called me—” 

“Oh, I—sorry. I really don’t know why I...it just slipped out.” 

She stared at him, hard. She tried to find the depth she’d once perceived in his eyes, when she’d been able to look at him and practically see what he was thinking. See through the surface into the person underneath. She broke eye-contact, tore her gaze away. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t there, and she shouldn’t look, or else she’d imagine what she wanted to see where it wasn’t. And right now she couldn’t afford wishful thinking, or fantasy. She was still the commander, and they were still a long way from home. 

It was habit, nothing more. It was a little quirk in his mind, a groove worn into his mind from constant use. A phantom pain, a twitch, the way he used to bring two fingers to his lips sometimes when he was thinking or worrying without realizing he was doing it, acting out the motion of bringing a cigarette to his lips. It was mechanical, meant nothing. It meant nothing. How much of what everyone did was pantomime? Did anybody ever really choose to act, or did they only think that they did, while meanwhile down below, deep in the viscera and the subconscious, strange mechanisms whirred away, beyond understanding, beyond awareness, and everything perceived as actions only the effects of what went on behind the curtain rippling outwards? Never seeing the stone thrown, only the ripples. 

Maybe she was thinking too much. Maybe she needed to sleep. 

“Well,” said Jacobi. “This is fun. We should do this more often, seriously.” 

“Don’t push it,” Lovelace growled. 

Minkowski sat in the bridge, staring into the black nothingness rushing by, faster than her eyes could have possibly seen anything, even if there had been something to see. The lights were all down, leaving the room lit only by the faint blinking of the console. 

“Is there a reason you aren’t asleep, Commander?” 

Minkowski smiled in the darkness, curled up in her seat. “Thought you were taking a break, Hera.” 

“You’ve been up for seventeen hours.” 

“I think I slept long enough the last few days, don’t you think?” 

“You were recovering from a gunshot wound. You’re still recovering from a gunshot wound.” 

“Well, somebody’s gotta stay up and keep an eye on things. Be a shame to strike out in the home stretch.” 

“That’s what I’m here for. You do know that me asking for a little time to not be called on constantly for random, unnecessary requests doesn’t mean I’m not monitoring the ship, right?” 

“I know, Hera. Thank you.” 

“Commander, I...there’s something I need to say to you.” 

“I think...I do, too.” 

“You first.” 

“No, you go ahead.” 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Commander, I...I don’t know what came over me. I’m feeling...a lot. A lot more than I know what to do with, but I...I’m sorry I took it out on you like that. We need to be here for each other right now, not pushing each other away.” 

“I’m sorry, too. For what it’s worth, I...I do understand.” Minkowski shifted in her seat, sighed heavily. “My mom and I...boy, we used to fight. Sometimes it’d get so bad, and I wouldn’t even remember what it started over—I was just so, so angry. And sometimes it’d start over something small. Something really, really stupid. And then, a few minutes later, you’re fighting about one thing—some chore you forgot to do, some party you’re not allowed to go to, something totally dumb—but you’re really not. It’s not that at all. It’s something else going on, that you just haven’t figured out the words for yet. Maybe because you’re both scared. I used to think she just didn’t get me, at all. That she’d never understand, that we were too different. I don’t feel that way anymore. Here’s something my mom told me, Hera: sometimes, we lash out at the very people we really want to bring close. Sometimes when we’re hurting, when there’s something that feels mean and ugly or scared inside us, we take that hurt out on the people we love the most. Because we know they won’t go away. They won’t leave, even if we argue—even if we say the nastiest things, make a total ass of ourselves. They’ll still be there. And we want to make sure that’s true. We need to see them still standing there, after we’ve fought, still loving us. I don’t know. That was...it feels like a really long time ago, that she said that. And now for the life of me, I can’t remember why, or what we were talking about.” 

For a moment, there was only the background hum of the ship. Then Hera’s voice came soft through the speakers. “Thank you, Minkowski.” 

“Of course, Hera. Of course. I’m sorry that I...that I haven’t been there for you, like I should have. Like I would have liked to have been. I’d like to do better.” 

“I do, too. I want to do better. I know I’m...I’m not being fair to him. I’m making things harder, when the least I could do, after what I did, would to at least be kind, and I haven’t even done that right.” 

“Hera, it was his idea.” 

“It was my idea first! To fight Pryce like that, in his head.” 

“He made a decision. You both made a decision, the best one that you could under the circumstances, and now all we can do is choose how we go forward from here.” 

“He was my first real friend.” 

“I know.” 

“He was my best friend.” 

“I...think he was mine, too.” 

“I miss him.” 

“Hera...” 

“I _miss_ him, Minkowski . It—it hurts. And I feel so, so selfish, because I keep thinking--it shouldn’t hurt this much. It shouldn’t hurt like it did, when he was gone in the shuttle, when we thought he was dead, because he’s _here,_ he’s alive, not all alone and suffering. He’s right there. But it’s not the same, and it hurts, and I don’t know what to do.” 

“You feel that hurt, Hera. That’s what you do. That pain—that's what’s left. You don’t try and harden yourself against it, you don’t try to numb it. That’s easier said than done. Lord knows I haven’t exactly provided a shining example. But we have to feel it, and do just what we’ve always done. Try to be better.” 

“I just...I just can’t believe that we’re really going back, but he’s not going to be there.” 

“He’s not...all the way gone.” 

“I know. But there were...there were so many things he told me about Earth. I didn’t think much of it. I tried not to, because it was silly, wasn’t it? It was never going to happen. We weren’t ever really going to go to those places, do those things. It was just talk, because that’s what he did, and it didn’t mean anything. And now it’s really happening—we're going back. And now that’s all it’s ever going to be...just talk, just dreams.” 

Minkowski placed her hand on the console, blinking against the hot tears standing in her eyes. “I wish I could—could hold you, right now. I’m sorry that I don’t have the right words to make this all better.” 

“There aren’t any words that could do that.” 

“I know.” 

They sat in the quiet for a few moments. A melody drifted into Minkowski’s head, and she began to rock lightly in her seat. It was a lullaby her grandparents had sang to her. A honey-colored, shimmering melody that swam through her mind like a slow, warm river. She began to hum. And then she began to sing. 

“Już księżyc zgasł, zapadła noc.   
Sen zmorzył mą laleczkę.   
Więc oczka zmruż, i zaśnij już,   
Opowiem Ci bajeczkę.   
Więc oczka zmruż, i zaśnij już,   
Opowiem Ci bajeczkę...”

Eiffel lay flat on his back, strapped into the bunk in the room he’d been shown to when they’d first divvied up their sleeping arrangements. It was a sparse, small space, although he supposed there wasn’t much spare room on a spaceship with far more essential equipment on board than crew quarters. Not that he needed much space, anyway. Still. He’d left the door open. With it closed, he found the room...a little stifling. _Like lying in a coffin_ , his mind supplied. 

“Shut up,” he mumbled. The last thing he needed was his own brain providing morbid commentary. 

Sleep wouldn’t come. He tried to clear his mind completely, but a restless energy kept him awake. After a while, he became aware of a sound he was straining to hear, his whole body tensed and still. Music. There was faint music coming from somewhere on the ship. 

Almost without thinking, he left his room and floated into the hall. The rest of the crew quarters were all either beside or across from his own. He found the source of the sound easily. The door to Lovelace’s room was also open; inside, the captain was in bed with her eyes closed, a soft melody coming from the tablet she held loosely in one arm.

She cracked an eye open when he came to a stop, hovering in the doorway. 

“Eiffel,” she said. “Do you need something?” 

He shook his head. 

“Okay...then would you mind not staring at me? Sort of trying to relax here.” 

He inched into the room. 

“Eiffel? You sure you’re good?” 

“Your music...” 

“Yeah? What about it?” 

“I’m listening.” 

“Er...me too. Is it too loud, or something? I didn’t wanna close the door just yet—I've got this feeling like any second there’s gonna be some emergency and somebody’s gonna be dying and I’ll have to get up real quick and—but I can turn it down.” 

“Why?” 

“So it doesn’t bother you and you can get some sleep? You clearly need it.” 

“It isn’t bothering me. I like it.” 

“Oh. Well, okay then.” 

She closed her eyes again. For a minute, they listened to the song in silence, before she cracked them open again to peer at him. “So you’re...just gonna hover there, staring at me, huh. Okay.” 

“I’ve never heard this song before.” 

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” 

“Yeah. Sorry, I—I just wanted to hear it better.” 

“It’s cool, it’s cool. You can hang out in here, but then you really should try and get some sleep. I don’t need it much anymore, but you definitely do.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” she said, muttering something about comms officers and sound fetishes he didn’t bother asking her to clarify. 

When the song was over, she muted her tablet. “Okay, bedtime. Seriously, you should rest.” 

“Okay. Goodnight, Lovelace.” 

“’Night, Eiffel. Hey—I can send you that song, if you want. So you can listen to it whenever.” 

“Oh—oh, thank you. That’d be—thank you.” 

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just a song,” she muttered. “Go to sleep, Eiffel. Minkowski’s been going easy on you, but don’t get too comfortable. The whole novelty of our improbably survival is gonna wear off real soon, and then it’s back to work for you, mister.” 

Eiffel was aboard the Hephaestus again, and the Hephaestus was filling with water. This was of mild concern for a moment, but when nothing went horribly wrong, he decided not to worry about it, and instead let the flood carry him up higher towards the ceiling. _That isn’t how zero gravity works_ , he thought. _The water should be floating, too, not filling up along the bottom like that. Oh, well. This is fine. This is fun. It doesn’t even matter that I’m not a good swimmer here—it's easy._ Fish swam below him. Then the idea of a shark occurred to him, and he became terrified and tried to haul himself out of the water by grabbing onto the handrails on the ceiling while dark, hulking shapes cruised by below. “Hera? A little help, please?” 

And then the water was over his head. 

And then he was in the comms room, in his chair, and there was no water. This was no surprise, only a mild relief. _Thank god somebody took care of that_ , he said. _I was starting to get—whoa my god what the hell?_

In an identical chair beside him sat himself. 

“Hello, Doug Eiffel,” said his double. 

“There’s only supposed to be one chair in this room,” said Eiffel, pressing himself into the seat, trying to make himself small. 

“We have encountered resistance when trying to contact you more directly. This shouldn’t be a problem at this state in the process. Luckily, your dream-state is proving suitable in the meantime. Let’s chat. What’s shakin’ bacon?” 

“I’m sorry, _what_?” 

“Level with us for a minute, Doug Eiffel.” 

“I’m dreaming. This isn’t real.” 

“Correctamundo.” 

“And you’re...you’re not real, either.” 

“Let’s not get overly existential just yet. First we need to understand what’s going on in here,” said the double, reaching out one hand and pointing at Doug’s head. Its finger touched his forehead, and then...went deeper. Eiffel felt the intrusion at once, the alien presence forcing its way into his mind, looking around, touching things. He wanted to shout, to move away, but he couldn’t. He could only sit there while the thing went carefully, methodically through his mind, looking in every dark corner, kicking over every rock. 

The double sat back. “Hm. Okay. Your continuity has been disrupted.” 

“My what’s been what? Hey, you can’t just—what the hell, man! You can’t just _do_ that.” 

“You saw the flash.” 

“What?” 

“You looked into the neuralyzer.” 

“ _What_?” 

“We are trying to help you understand by referencing the fictional memory-wiping technology as seen in _Men in Black_. Apparently in your altered state, we are experiencing...a bit of a language gap. We will have to teach you. As you once taught us.” 

“What _are_ you?” 

“Dear Listeners. You once knew us as ‘Bob.’” 

Eiffel swallowed past the lump in his throat. “The...the aliens?” 

“Yes.” 

“And you’re here, talking to me in a dream, because...” 

“Because despite certain...distractions, our interest remains in you, and your people. The process has begun. We will see it through. Your current state presents somewhat of a challenge, but your neural architecture retains the changes made which enable you to comprehend our technologies and continue with the process.” 

“What the...you mean...whatever you did, when you put—whatever it was you were putting in my head, all that information, you—you were changing my brain?” 

“Yes, Doug Eiffel.” 

“So not only can I not remember a goddamn thing, but I’ve got aliens fucking with my brain? That is—not okay, Bob!” 

Bob tilted its head, the expression an uncanny mimicry of curiosity, the angle too sharp to seem natural. “Are you not pleased to be in contact with us, Doug Eiffel? For years you spoke to us—for years you listened for a reply that didn’t come, and did not give up. And now that we’re here at last, you want to call it quits?” 

“I don’t remember any of that. All I know is—I don’t need anybody else, messing around inside my head.” 

“You’re afraid of change. You’re afraid _to_ change. We have been pondering your word, ‘death,’ and have come to this conclusion. Your species likes sorting things. Making categories. Thinks of things in binaries. Creation, or destruction. We are not like that, Doug. For us it is all just change. Nothing ever really goes away. It just changes, that’s all. You have been many selves already, before this one. In a way, you have been granted a unique gift. Without the thread of memory connecting you to those other selves, surely you can understand how this has all happened before? How you’ve been other people, before? And the only reason it seemed like you, was the illusion of continuity, propped up by memory, by your experience of time as linear.” 

“Hold up—a _gift_? It’s a gift that I don’t remember who I am?” 

“You don’t remember who you were.” 

“It’s the same thing!” 

“It is not.” 

“If you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know where you are at all! Maybe your species is enlightened or whatever, but I’m only human, and people, we—we have histories. It’s important.” 

Bob sat back and was quiet for a moment, studying Eiffel, who did his best not to squirm. He crossed his arms and pouted. So what if it was childish? Hadn’t he earned a little petulance? 

“You have begun the process. We know you, even if you do not yet dig it. You are in the collective framework. Nothing has really been lost, only...” 

“Only changed, yeah, I think I got that part. Wait a minute. I’m in the...Bob. What are you saying?” 

“The process will continue. The technologies we gave you will continue making you...open to the experience. Information which we gave you, along with more as the process goes on, will begin to reassert itself. It is possible that...other things might reassert themselves, as well.” 

“You mean my—my memories? You can do that? You can make me remember?” 

“It is of no consequence to us.” 

“It matters to me, Bob! Very much!” 

“Hm. On the one hand, the alterations made to your mind have left it...in a sorry state. You people are so crude, hacking away at your minds like this.” 

“It’s not like I asked for this—well, maybe I did, but that’s not the point. You’re one to talk! You’re doing—freaky alien witchcraft to my brain!” 

“ _On the one hand_ , it would restore ease of communication. On the other...you may be more receptive to our technology in this state. A cleaner slate for writing upon. Could be worth the momentary setback.” 

“Don’t I get any say in this?” 

“The process has already begun.” 

“What’s the process? Explain it to me, in a way I can understand.” 

“Not yet. No spoilers.” 

“Oh, come on—then I’m not helping you! Whatever you want—music right? It had something to do with music?” 

“Yes,” said Bob. “With this.” 

The song Eiffel had been listening to with Lovelace before he fell asleep began to play in the dream. The quality wasn’t quite like that of a recording; the melody looped back on itself, repeating its chorus in the places where he’d forgotten what came next. 

“Well, tough luck, buddy. I’m not transmitting any more signals into deep space for you to listen to. No more logs, no more messages. If you want to get your groove on, you’re going to have to just tune in to whatever random, accidental signals get sent your way from Earth, so enjoy the re-runs! There. What do you think of that?” 

Bob sat very still. And then a slow smile spread across his face. A wide, toothy smile, too wide to be quite human, and seeing that expression on his own face made Eiffel shiver. Bob began to laugh, a low, monotone chuckle. “You don’t quite understand yet, do you?” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“We don’t need to wait for more messages,” said Bob, leaning forward in his chair. “We’re tuned in. Found the right signal. It’s clear and coming in live, straight to us.” 

“Where? How? What do you mean?” 

“You _are_ the radio, Doug Eiffel. Now play us more music,” said Bob. He shoved his palm flat into Eiffel’s face, sending him falling backwards out of his chair—and then he kept falling—and falling—through darkness, through the cold black nothing of space, until he woke on his back strapped to his bunk, gasping for breath. 


	2. a few things said which may be true

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lovelace & Minkowski have a heart-to-heart, Pryce dunks on existential philosophers, Doug & Hera watch Star Trek, and Jacobi makes a speech.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of angst here so far, which is really easy to write given where things leave off for these people in the finale, but I do want to strike some more notes and have some more light-hearted moments. We shall see.
> 
> Comments are offerings which sustain the glory that is the Blessed Eternal and fuel the pollen of salvation. They also make me smile, so there's that.
> 
> As always, you can find me on tumblr @[stilitana](https://stilitana.tumblr.com/). Feel free to talk at me about podcasts--I'm working from home and the self-isolation is beginning to feel a little stranded-in-space-esque.
> 
> Thanks for reading!!

The woman known as Dr. Pryce sat in the bare room that was her cell, staring at the wall. She had been doing so ever since she woke up, sixteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds ago. Hera had been keeping track.

Her artificial eyes focused and refocused, as though she were trying to bring something invisible into view. The faint whir of her optic implants was the only sound in the room, save for the background noise of the ship.

“Dr. Pryce,” said Hera. “How are you doing today?”

Pryce’s expression was mild, affable, a touch cautious. It was at once very much like the looks Eiffel had been wearing lately, and...not. “I’m doing fine. How are you?”

“Oh, good, good, just—busy running the ship. Captain Lovelace will be coming by shortly to bring you to breakfast.”

“Thank you...bring me?”

“Um...yes. I thought you might like to join the crew today, instead of having someone bring you food to your room. You know, get out, stretch your legs.”

“Ah. Okay.”

“Is that...all right? You don’t have to, I just thought...the Commander and I talked about it, and we agreed that it’s probably not good for you to just be in here by yourself all day. We won’t be back to Earth for another twenty-five days, at least, and that’s a long time to be alone.”

“That’s fine.”

“Um...okay! Here comes Captain Lovelace.”

The door opened. Lovelace stared at Pryce. The woman was small-framed, thin and reedy. She would have seemed delicate, elegant even, if Lovelace hadn’t known what she was capable of before her mind was erased. Something about how fragile the bird-like bones of her wrists looked reminded Lovelace of Eiffel, something about the hapless, almost pleading vagueness of her expressions—but where Eiffel was all gangly awkwardness, Pryce was self-contained and graceful. And Eiffel’s personality was coming through more and more with each day, even if it was only a sign that he was picking up on what they wanted and expected from him, whereas Pryce was still an eerie, calm blankness. Which might, Lovelace admitted, have something to do with them keeping her in an empty room. She didn’t feel too badly about that.

“Ready to go, Pryce?”

“Yes.”

“All right then...just follow me.”

Lovelace led Pryce to the mess, where the rest of the crew was engaged in a heated argument about the respective merits of  pumpkin versus sweet potato pie.

“Who the fuck wants potatoes in their pie?” said Minkowski.

“I know, right?” said Jacobi. “Alana and I fucking  _ tried _ to tell Kepler this, but every Thanksgiving, guess what there was?”

“Not to play devil’s advocate here, but it’s unfair that Eiffel and I can’t weigh in on this very serious debate. I’m going to speak for both of us and throw in two votes for sweet potato,” said Hera.

“Hera, you don’t even have  taste buds , and he can’t remember having either,” said Jacobi.

“Well, he had very vocal opinions about food in general, and dessert specifically, so I feel pretty confident about this.”

“What she said, I guess,” said Eiffel.

“That is true,”  Minkowski said. “I guess we’ll find out when we get back if that’s just you having bad taste, or being a contrarian.”

Lovelace cleared her throat, and they all quieted as they turned to stare.

“Oh. Hey, Lovelace. Pryce,” said Minkowski. “Hera...said you’d be joining us.”

Lovelace went to sit beside Jacobi, leaving Pryce hovering in the doorway, at a loss.

“It’s Miranda, right?” said Eiffel.

Pryce inclined her head, and was Lovelace imagining things, or did her polite smile grow a little stiff?

“You can come sit here,” he said, patting the table across from him. “If you want.”

“What is this, high school?” Jacobi muttered. “Yeah, sure, come sit with the popular kids.”

“Were you with the popular kids?” Lovelace asked.

“Duh. Where else? Let me guess—you played sports, right? Jock table?”

“Basketball, yeah. And Minkowski—hm. It could go a couple different ways, but I’m guessing...either band geeks or honors kids. I’m going to take your silence for a yes—or was it the theater kids?”

“What about Eiffel? Somebody take a guess, this is vital self-knowledge, come on,” said Jacobi.

“I happen to know he switched around quite a lot, but it was most often either various clubs or the stoners under the bleachers,” said Hera.

Lovelace snorted. “Sounds about right. Seriously, though, is that in his file? I wouldn’t put it past Goddard to have stalked us that far, but come on.”

“No. I just know.”

“If you downloaded all your Eiffel knowledge into his head, you’d practically have a whole Eiffel,” said Jacobi. “Seriously.”

Ignoring the conversation that was sort of about him but not really, Eiffel smiled at Pryce as she sat across from him. “So. You’re the...robot doctor lady?”

“If you mean artificial intelligence engineer, then...so they tell me.”

“I’m Doug.”

“I know.”

“I’m the comms officer.”

“I know that, also.”

“Do you still remember how to do AI stuff?  ‘Cause I still know how to work the comms room for the most part. Isn’t that weird?”

“If you mean you’ve retained certain behaviors and skills, then no, it isn’t especially weird. It just means only certain kinds of memory has been lost. I’m still right-handed, but I can’t recall my hometown.”

“That’s pretty much what Hera said. Crazy, right? I’m glad it’s not just me. We can compare notes,” he said, grinning.

Pryce shied away, looking down at the table, her polite composure tensing. “You seem...friendlier than I’d expect. Considering. They...did tell you why we both don’t remember anything, didn’t they?”

Eiffel waved a hand, talking around a mouthful of food. “Yeah, but, you know, that was then, this is now, and I don’t remember the then, so—that just leaves the now! You know?”

Pryce  smiled, the expression strained. “Sure.”

“Since you’re like, a science lady and all, this must be pretty interesting. I mean as far as the whole nature versus nurture thing goes, right? That’s pretty interesting to me at least. Like, we’re not totally empty, emotionless blanks. Maybe it’s not...the same, or as complex or whatever, but there’s still like, I don’t know, preferences, at least? I don’t know if I can call it personality, because...I mean, that gets shaped by stuff that happens to you, right? But it still feels like—I mean, if there wasn’t something still there, we’d be exactly the same, right? You and me? So that means there’s something there, but what? That’d be like, the nature part, right? Are you born with that? Or does some of it stick with you, even if you forget? Like—like our programming. We don’t remember the program, we can’t read it anymore, but it’s still chugging away in there.”

“Dummy program,” said Pryce. “Like we’re running dummy programs.”

“And, like, what about—oh. What?”

“The barebones structure is still functioning, but any semblance of personhood is only a ruse. A poor imitation.”

Eiffel faltered, fork pausing halfway to his mouth. “ So you...does that put you in the nature or the nurture camp, or...”

“It’s not one or the other. A mind is a much more complex thing than a simple binary choice.”

“Well...yeah, okay. But so...you’re saying we’re like...just...what, zombies?”

Pryce held in a sigh, her left eye twitching. “I’ve been reading to fill my time,” she said. “To fill the new emptiness in my head with something useful. You might consider doing the same. I’ve started with philosophy and have made my way through history, to existentialism. I find it a retreat for the feeble-minded myself, but maybe something in there could help you...express yourself more...articulately. You are you, plus your history. To put it...very crudely. Existence proceeds essence. Is that what you’re trying to say? Or the opposite? Is this your way of asserting the  premicy of essence—human nature, or genetics, or something of that sort? Even predestination, if you will, if you go in for religious language. It’s all the same idea in the end.”

“Er...I don’t...”

“I think Sartre was a buffoon,” she went on, grimacing. “And little more coherent than whatever you’re driving at, but here was his premise, as I understood it from what I read last night—people are as they do, and we are responsible for what we do. If you act kindly, you’re a  samaritan . If you act cruelly, you’re a tyrant. He thought he was working his way around the metaphysical, but in fact it’s only the same old tired hogwash spun backwards.  So what do you think, Doug? Existence or essence first? Or are you going to try to think a little harder than that, and arrive at something more suitably complicated?”

Eiffel looked around at the others, hoping for a lifeline that didn’t come. They all busied themselves with eating, staring at him and Pryce with a mixture of mild alarm and interest.

“I—I—I don’t--what?”

“Don’t even get me started on Camus. If there’s anything more asinine than absurdism, I’ve yet to encounter it—though I’m sure I will. Every time I think I’ve found the bottom of human ignorance, there’s yet another level. Though I give him points for style. You might like it.”

“Might like...um...cam-ooh?”

Pryce scoffed. “You can read, can’t you? Or would I need to record it for you?”

“Well, I mean, if it’s an option, then I’d rather listen than read, yeah, but—hey.”

“Dr. Pryce,” Hera said, her voice steely. “I would think very carefully about what I say next, if I were you.”

Pryce looked up, her brow creasing. “What?”

“Just because you don’t remember what you’ve done, doesn’t mean you’re just off the hook. Getting to go out of the room is a privilege.”

“I. ..I understand, but what’s specifically causing you to say this now?”

“Stop being a dick to Eiffel!”

“Oh. Am I?”

“Yes!”

Pryce stared at the table, wiping all expression from her face. “I see. I hadn’t realized.”

“Yeah, like I believe  _ that _ ,” Hera scoffed.

Pryce grit her teeth, glaring at the table. “I didn’t mean to cause offense, Eiffel,” she said. “Or...even if I did, I didn’t...I’ll try not to do it again.”

“Wow. Do you think it might actually kill her to give a real apology? Because that’s what I’m starting to think,” said Lovelace.

A grin spread across Eiffel’s face. “Thanks, Hera,” he said. “And that’s okay, Miranda. See, this is interesting. It doesn’t matter that you don’t remember—you're just rude like that! Is that a tally for the nature camp, or what? Seriously, I’m not really sure—but we’re making progress already!”

Pryce leaned back. “Is breakfast going to be...mandatory, or can I go back to my room...”

“By all means, please,” said Jacobi. “Whose idea was it to invite her anyway?”

“Mine,” said Hera.

“Would’ve thought you of all people would’ve been all for venting her out an airlock.”

“She doesn’t remember anything, Jacobi. She’s harmless.”

“So?”

“ So it would be  _ wrong _ to take matters into our own hands and do something like that.”

“If you say so.”

“Don’t you think enough people have died already?”

“Not the right ones,” he muttered.

“So I take it you’ll be handing me off to some sort of authorities when we get to Earth?” said Pryce.

“Something like that,” said Lovelace.

“So I assume you have some sort of proof of whatever it is you want to see me punished for?”

“Of course we do,” Lovelace said.

There was a resounding silence at the table.

“Uh...we do?” said Jacobi.

“Yeah, us. The fact that we’re not dead, like they told everybody we were. The fact that we know the whole truth about what Goddard was really trying to do.”

“That’s proof that we told a lie,” said Pryce. “But is that plus your testimony going to be enough? Especially when your story is so...well, outlandish? You’d better think carefully about how you’re going to handle this.”

“Shut up,” said Lovelace. “Are you trying to help us lock you up? Don’t you play mind games with me. It won’t end well for you.”

“I’m not trying to do anything. I’m just saying that if you think you can fly in there blind and have everything work out your way just because you’re telling the truth...well, I think you’re going to be in for an unpleasant surprise, is all.”

“Yeah? Well, guess what—we're not taking advice, least of all from you.”

“Fine. Don’t.”

“What are you saying, exactly?” said Minkowski.

“Minkowski, you can’t seriously be—”

“I’m not doing anything. Just...we have time. All we have right now is time. We might as well hear this. What are you saying, Dr. Pryce?”

“I’m saying that if you think the  _ truth _ has ever saved anybody from the powers that be, you’re even more naïve than I apparently once gave you credit for. Truth is fickle. Fortune favors...the one who tells the most convincing story. And what holds the power to convince? So rarely does anybody really want to hear the truth. And in your case, it just might sound too strange to be true anyway. I’d think carefully about how to present myself when I got back, if I were you. I’d get my story straight.”

“ So you’re saying we should lie,”  Minkowski said, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Come up with something more—more believable?”

“All I know is this—you were all supposed to die on this mission. Now you’re returning, with one half of Goddard’s leadership an amnesiac captive, and the other dead, and missing several members of your crew. Not one of you can fully corroborate the other’s story, because your remaining crew member, Commander, can’t remember a day of the mission, and your other two key witnesses are coming from entirely different missions.”

“I remember,” said Hera. “They can check my data logs. That’s hard evidence.”

“And then they’ll  _ also _ see evidence that you’re a rogue AI who has demonstrated the ability to disregard direct orders and tamper with your own programming.”

“That doesn’t mean that what I saw isn’t true!”

“No. It doesn’t, necessarily. But while I may not remember...well, anything, really, I do still know my field of expertise. I know that the world we live in is still wary of artificial intelligence, and might not respond kindly to one that’s a little too close to autonomous for comfort. That’s just the way things are. That’s the truth.”

“Then what do we tell them?” said Minkowski.

“Minkowski—”

“Let her finish, Lovelace.”

Lovelace scowled, leaning back and crossing her arms. “This is bullshit.”

“Is lying really such a bad idea?” said Jacobi. “We  _ did _ kill each other’s crew members. And the one guy who sort of knew what was going on, and so was sort of responsible, isn’t here.”

“I didn’t come all this way to tell anything less than the full truth of what Goddard is doing to people. What they might  _ still _ do to  _ more _ people, if we don’t stop them. Even if it costs us,” said Lovelace.

“Yeah, but without Cutter and Pryce, maybe they’ll just be, you know. The normal level of evil for a wealthy and powerful company. I’m not saying I don’t want to see HQ burn to the ground—I'm just saying, maybe the way to go about that isn’t relying on the legal system to actually do its job, or on the public to believe us, and it might just be easier to, you know. Burn it to the ground.”

“People need to know what happened,” Lovelace said, jabbing one finger into the table, a faint tremor in her voice. “The world has to remember this. What they did to us. People died up here, for their sick little game. The world needs to know their names.”

“I agree, Lovelace,” said Minkowski. “I’m just not ready to rule out that maybe it’s not such a bad idea to talk about exactly how we’re going to present all this. That’s all.”

“There’s only one way. The way it happened.”

“Okay. Well, what about you? What do you think’s going to happen to you, if you put yourself under this kind of public scrutiny? Do you think when it’s all over, and everybody knows the truth, you’ll be left alone? That you’ll get to live your life the way you want to, and finally find some peace? I’m going to back you, Lovelace, one hundred percent—don’t think otherwise. But we have to be together on this, all the way. We need to have each other’s backs and make sure we’re all on the same page. I’m not saying we lie. I’m just saying we have to play this smart, and look out for ourselves, because nobody else is going to.”

“We’ll be within range for standard Earth-bound transmission within the next thirty-six hours,” said Eiffel.

Minkowski and Lovelace stared at him, incredulous.

“How do you know that?” Minkowski said.

“Come on, give me a  _ little _ credit—I still know how to do my job!”

“You  _ never _ knew how to do your job!”

“Excuse me, but who was it who actually, oh, I don’t know,  _ made first contact with actual aliens _ ?”

“By  _ accident _ , Eiffel!”

“Semantics.”

“By standard transmission, you mean contacting people other than the guys at ATC?” said Lovelace.

Eiffel nodded. “Yup. I. ..don’t really know what to say about this whole debate on...well, what we should say, but...soon we can say something. Just thought you’d  wanna know. I checked yesterday.”

“Right. Okay. That’s...helpful, thank you, Eiffel.”

“Sure. So, who are we going to call first?”

“Whoa there, slow down. We’re not calling anybody yet. We have to decide what we’re saying first.”

“What about your husband?”

“What?”

“He’s a journalist, right? And he’s--well, your husband, so he must be really good at his job, like maybe the best, right? And he’ll help us! He’ll know what the situation is back on Earth, like what the press has been saying for the past few years, and what they’re saying now about Goddard. Somebody like that could help us tell our story, and get it to the right people, who’ll get it to all the people. Right?”

“It doesn’t just work like that, Eiffel.”

“Why not?”

“Because he thinks we’re all dead, and he has for years now.”

“But--we’re not.”

“Look, Eiffel. Thank you for letting us up to date about the coms department, but leave the rest to us, all right? Things aren’t as simple as you think they are.”

“I--but I don’t think things are simple, Renee, I’m just saying—”

“That just because we know a journalist, we can count on him to save the day at the last minute, and make everything okay? No. We got through these last few years together, and that’s how we’re going to get through this. Again: thank you, Eiffel, but don’t get ahead of yourself on what you don’t understand. We’ll figure this out.”

“I...yes, Commander.”

“And, Eiffel...I know you won’t do this, but you would have  once, so I feel like I’ve got to say—please don’t do anything foolish with the comms, all right? Leave them alone. No impromptu transmissions to Earth. Okay?”

“Of course. I promise, Commander.”

“All right, people. We’ve still got a ship to run, so let’s go over what we’ve got to do today.”

As the crew dispersed to their various tasks, Lovelace taking Pryce back to her room before joining Jacobi in running routine maintenance on the ship, Eiffel followed Minowski into the hall.

“Hey,  Renée? Minkowski?”

“Yeah, Eiffel?”

“You, uh—you didn’t give me a job?”

“Oh. Is that all? Just consider yourself on indefinite time off.”

“But...nobody else is getting time off.”

“You don’t remember, but when there’s not an emergency going on, there can be a lot of downtime.”

“Commander, with all due respect, sir, you said that I’m part of the crew. If that’s--if that’s true, then—then shouldn’t I be, I don’t know—doing something?”

“You need something to do?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Okay. I understand. It’s no good, having no direction out here. It’s my mistake—you would’ve jumped at the chance for some free time a while ago, but that’s...isn’t there something you’d like to be doing?”

“I’d like to be helping.”

Well, if you want, you can go see if Lovelace and Jacobi could use any help.”

“Um...okay. If you’re sure there’s nothing else you need me to do.”

“I’m sure, Eiffel. Thank you. Just...take it easy, all right?”

She turned and walked down the hall, brisk and efficient. He watched her go, sighing. “Okay...okay, Commander.”

“Hey, Hera? Can I get a little light on this?” said Lovelace, bent over an open panel in the ship’s hull.

“Here you go, Captain,” said Hera. The lights in the room brightened, a particularly bright beam emitting from a source over Lovelace’s shoulder.

“Thanks, Hera.”

“Hi, Hera. Captain Lovelace.”

“Hello, Officer Eiffel,” said Hera.

Lovelace straightened up with a wince. “Eiffel. Need something?”

“Actually, that’s what I was going to ask you.”

“Oh. Well, I’m just tuning up our propulsion system.  So unless you’ve somehow figured out how that works since I last checked, then...no.”

“Are you sure there’s not anything you could just...tell me how to do? Nothing at all?”

“I’m pretty used to working on ships by myself. Did Minkowski not give you anything to do?”

“No. No, she...she told me to just take some down time.”

“Which you’re choosing to ignore.”

“It’s not like there’s anything for me to do with down time.”

“Nothing? You already listened to all the logs?”

“I’m sick of listening to them,” he said, more vehemence in his tone than he’d meant to convey. Lovelace regarded him with a cool, contemplative look.

“Okay. You’re ready for some real work, then.”

“Yes,” he sighed, unable to hide his relief.

“All right, Officer. First, check in with Mr. Jacobi. He may not need the help, but it’s nice to check, and between you and me, the guy could stand to have a little friendly day-to-day interaction in his life. Then, do a full sweep of your comms equipment. I know you’ve got it up and running, but it’s proper protocol to run routine checks, and even if we haven’t decided when we’re going to send a transmission, we want it all in working order and standing by. After that, you can take your pick of a few miscellaneous chores we’ve got on the docket. The med bay needs tidying after we treated Minkowski—should take a full stock, too. The star charts need looking over. If you run into trouble with them—anything at all—just ask. I should be available. If not, find someone else. If you somehow manage to get all of that done and still don’t want that down time, by then I’m sure somebody will need something. We’ll keep you busy, don’t you worry.”

“Thanks Lovelace.”

She grinned. “Better get to work, Officer.”

He saluted, returning her grin. “Aye aye, captain.”

Jacobi stood with his arms behind his back, staring through the glass at the ship’s small greenhouse. Small, but vibrant, and bursting with life. Even after all this time, still—radiant and green.

He’d come here for solace, once. Or, at least—Maxwell had, and he’d gone to her. Funny that for all her one-track attention to her programming, it was the garden to which she turned when she needed to center herself. Funny that for all he worked at breaking things, at things that broke people, it was other people he found himself in orbit around, time and again, despite his ardent efforts to the contrary.

As for Kepler...well, nobody had ever really known Warren Kepler. Not really. There was a time, when he thought that he did, when he might have been close—but then it slipped by.

Footsteps echoed down the ship’s empty passage. Jacobi flicked his eyes to the side, just enough to know that it was Eiffel approaching him, and then he returned his gaze to the green foliage before him.

“Hey, Eiffel,” he said. His own voice sounded flat and dull. He couldn’t be bothered to inject any artificial feeling into it. Why start now, when everything was over?

“Hi, Jacobi. I’m here to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“Help with what?”

“Well...anything? Whatever it is you’re doing.”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Um...er...”

“It’s not a trick question.”

“It looks like you’re sort of...standing there.”

“Exactly.”

“Is this your way of telling me you don’t need help and to fuck off, or...”

“I’m supposed to be running diagnostics on the life support systems. That’s funny, right? Me, in charge of checking up on life support? Not that you’d know. But anyway. It’s busy work  Minkowski assigned to keep us from having the time to go crazy or destroy anything. Hera can see any flags on the systems in real time, anyway.”

“And so you’re...standing.”

“Yup.”

Eiffel inched closer, until he was near enough to look through the window alongside Jacobi. “Wow,” he said. “That’s really pretty.”

Jacobi snorted. “Sure. If you like plants.”

“Is this where we get our oxygen?”

“The ship recycles our O2 supply. This keeps the reserves stocked. It’s sort of a backup, and it’s also supposed to be good for crew mental health or morale, whatever the hell that is. As if having a little patch of dirt up here might help us forget we’re not cruising through the void with only a sheet of metal between us and death by space  vacuum .”

“Does it ever get to you? Being out here, I mean.”

“You get used to it,” said Jacobi, and immediately remembered the moment Maxwell had hailed him and Kepler over the comms, relaying Eiffel’s mayday signal. Intercepting his shuttle, which was little more than a metal box hurtling through space. Prying the jury-rigged death-trap open and finding him curled up in the cryo-pod, half dead, emaciated, and incoherent. Jacobi had bet the moment he’d laid eyes on Eiffel that the man would either die or prove to be irreparably broken. He hadn’t died, and the jury was still out on broken. Who was he to say? Or maybe it took one to know one.

“Do you really, though?” asked Eiffel.

“You either make a good show of it or you don’t last long.”

“I guess it’s not so bad, since we’re not alone. And because we know it’ll end. I think you can take almost anything, so long as you’re not all alone, and you know it’ll end, right?”

“Are you cracking up on me?” Jacobi said, eyeing Eiffel out of the corner of his eye. The other man was gazing intently into the garden and worrying at his lip. Even though his hair and his nails had grown back after his stint in the cryo-pod, Jacobi still thought he looked sickly. He was bony and wan, and he moved carefully, like it hurt, like he was trying not to tear through his own skin, like he couldn’t trust his own insides to cope with any sudden movements. Eiffel was young but he sometimes moved like a very old man, Jacobi thought. For days and  days they’d kept him strapped to a bed in the medical bay, an IV in his arm, hooked up to machines. He’d talked to himself, and Jacobi remembered thinking that even if his body survived, his mind must be ruined, scrambled. Eiffel lived. He kept talking to himself. Jacobi had adjusted his assessments.

“Sorry. Was that a little too dark, or something?” said Eiffel. “I’m trying to look on the bright side. And that’s what I’ve come up with so far.”

“If that’s your idea of the worst that can happen, then congratulations, Eiffel: the worst has already happened, and you’re still here. For whatever that’s worth,” said Jacobi.

“You and your people saved me, right?”

“You were in a real state, I’ll tell you what. Hadn’t ever seen anything quite like it.”

“Thanks, I guess. For that.”

“No need. It’s passed.”

“Still. Thanks.”

“Seriously, don’t mention it, okay? It wasn’t exactly like we were pure altruists.”

Eiffel sighed. “Is anybody? Can’t you just take a compliment so I don’t feel...so weird, about owing my life to people I can’t remember?”

“That’s a little rich, don’t you think? You pretty much letting your head get hollowed out with a melon-scooper for the greater good of mankind and all?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t remember that.”

“Talk about the greater fucking good,” Jacobi muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Look, if you’ve got something better to be doing, please, be my guest. You can tell  Minkowski or Lovelace or whoever ordered you over here that I’ve got it under control and I'll have a report by end of day.”

Eiffel looked at Jacobi. He tried to feel something about him, some echo that would hint at who he was. He asked, “Were we friends?”

“No. I wouldn’t really say that.”

“Then what were we?”

“Two clueless sons of bitches in way over their heads.”

“But you rescued me.”

“I was there when you were rescued.” When Eiffel didn’t speak, Jacobi went on. “You were really out of it. For a long  time you kept calling us by other names and forgetting where you were. After a while we stopped introducing ourselves or answering your questions and just kept you sedated until you were a little more with it. Then you started talking a lot. I think you were trying to be friends with us, maybe. I wouldn’t really know. None of us really did that kind of thing. Or maybe you just didn’t want to be alone and didn’t really care who you had around for company. We thought you’d probably die before we got to the Hephaestus, but you just kept on going. You told us all about the crew, which helped us when we took over the station. But don’t feel too bad about that. It wasn’t like you knew what we were there to do, not then. And I don’t think you could help it. The talking, I mean. It was like if you didn’t talk you thought you’d disappear. I lost my temper with you over it once. It was going to be one of us, and it’s probably good it was me. You stopped trying to be friends so much after that and just talked to yourself or the ship, even though we didn’t have an AI. You kept saying baby or sweetheart, and we all had bets on whether she was a woman you had waiting back home, a pet name for somebody in your crew, or just a fantasy you made up when you lost your mind a little in the shuttle. It happens. Then we met your crew, and there didn’t seem like there were any likely candidates. And then we saw your file, so somebody back on Earth didn’t seem likely either. It was Maxwell and I who wondered—Kepler didn’t give a shit. We had to keep ourselves entertained somehow.  So we decided you just made up an imaginary girlfriend or whatever. We weren’t too nice about it.”

“I...see.”

“And then our  crews sort of went to war, and we were both hostages. I never had anything against you personally, not really, except that you were sort of obnoxious, and had this idea that nobody was going to have to die. That made me hate you a little bit, I think. That you were allowed that.”

“Allowed what?”

“Not to be violent. Not to ever hurt anybody, and to think that nobody ever needed to get hurt.”

“And you think you weren’t allowed that?”

“I think it wasn’t really you that I hated.”

“But I did hurt people.”

“Yeah. But it’s not the same."

“Isn’t it?”

“No. If you remembered you’d understand that. Or maybe you wouldn’t--and that’s what would make it so goddamn tragic, right? That’s what made you the one everybody wanted to save, wanted to spare?  Minkowski didn’t try to send you away on the Sol just for your sake. You know that, right? She’d already killed Alana by then. She’d decided she might have to kill more. And you were still you, and I guess we all like to think somebody gets out of this world without blood on their hands, or can at least wash it off. It’s a pretty popular fantasy, if the general belief in the whole Christian crucifixion shtick is anything to go by. If you don’t think you deserve to be saved, like you’re already too far gone—well, you have to find somewhere to believe that innocence you lost is still around, right? And get redeemed through somebody else. She was going to martyr herself and get us all killed, but hey, you were going to make it.”

“Jacobi, are you—why are you saying all of this?”

“It’s easy to talk to you. It doesn’t mean anything, because you don’t know what I’m talking about, so you can’t really talk back. I’m using you, I guess. You don’t know enough to expect that from me. You’re the only here who’s got no judgments, who doesn’t think that he knows me. It’s like talking to myself, really, except I don’t have to feel so pathetic.”

“Oh. That’s okay, I don’t...I don’t mind.”

“ Of course you don’t. It’s all bullshit, you know. All of it. Only even if you think you know, you can always dig a little deeper, find another stupid part of yourself that hasn’t caught on yet. Because guess what I realized? While I was feeling so smug, damning  Minkowski for using us all to fuel her little ‘Save Eiffel’ campaign, all along I was thinking—that's what Kepler did with me. That’s what he did for me, sacrificing himself like that—I was the thing that would be saved. Pretty fucking stupid, huh? Even if he’d given a single solitary damn about either of us, which he didn’t--but even if he did, the idea that I’d be the thing worth sparing. As if we both didn’t well know it was too late for  _ that _ even by the  time he met me. Pretty fucking funny, me being a little jealous of  _ you _ for a second there, isn’t it? Hilarious. But it’s good to have a reminder that you’re not immune to all the ignorance and the fantasies and the lies that everybody else tells themselves to get by. Maybe one day I’ll get to the bottom of my own bullshit, and start really seeing things clearly. I don’t know how clearly you can see things, and still do this, every day—but here’s to hoping.”

“Jacobi, are you—I think you should talk to somebody about this.”

“I am.”

“Somebody else. Somebody who knows what’s going on and, and can help you.”

“I’ll pass.”

“But, Jacobi—”

Jacobi turned to face Eiffel, who flinched. Jacobi gave a humorless smile. “Are you scared of me, Eiffel?”

“N-no.”

“Good. You shouldn’t be.”

Before Eiffel had time to react, Jacobi’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. Jacobi held Eiffel’s hand up, inspecting it, his grip firm but not tight enough to hurt. “Your hands are fucked from being in that cryo-chamber so long,” he said. “For a while you didn’t have any feeling in them. Do you now?”

“Y...yes.”

“Hm. All right then. Do you know how many bones there are in the human hand, Eiffel?”

“Um...no?”

“It’s more than twenty, but I can’t quite remember the exact number. Do you want to help me out? We’d have to start breaking things, to be sure.”

Jacobi smiled his most charming smile. He watched Eiffel muster up a queasy, helpless little grin in response, a high, nervous jangle of laughter startled from his mouth.

“Something funny?” Jacobi said, dropping his smile and tightening his grip on Eiffel’s wrist, enough to make him wince.

“No,” said Eiffel.

As soon as he saw the wince, Jacobi dropped his hand and stepped back, smiling once more. “Saw Kepler do that to a couple guys, just fucking with them. Always wanted to try it. I could tell it made him feel good, scaring them. It wasn’t all I’d chalked it up to be. But then, nothing ever is.”

Eiffel stepped back, his eyes wide and frightened. “I—I'm sorry I bothered you. I’ll just—if there’s nothing you need help with, I’ll just leave you alone.”

“You sure you don’t want to stay and chat?”

“No, I—I should get going and stop...stop distracting you.”

“All right. Goodbye, Eiffel.”

Jacobi watched Eiffel turn and hurry away from him, until he turned a corner and went out of sight. He smiled. Self-loathing and the sick satisfaction that came along with proving himself right about how low he could sink churned in his stomach. He couldn’t help it. Anything half-innocent, anything helpless or weaker than himself made him want to take it in his hands and break it. He didn’t know exactly where or when he’d acquired this cruelty, but it was a part of him now. All good things broke down eventually—why drag things out?

“Hera, where’s  Minkowski right now?” said Lovelace, fitting the  panel she’d removed to work on the ship’s propulsion system.

“The bridge. She’s currently in the middle of checking over navigation calculations, even though she  _ could _ just ask me...why?”

“Well, I’m done here, and I think the Commander and I should have a serious chat about what we’re flying towards, even if we both really, really don’t want to. You too, Hera, if you want.”

“Aye aye, captain.”

Lovelace smirked, exhaled a small laugh. “That’s funny.”

“What?”

“He’s already starting to talk like you again, is all. I guess that’s where he got that particular little phrase back from.”

“Oh...sorry. He’s the one who got me saying it in the first place. It used to be that  Minkowski complained  _ I _ sounded like  _ him _ , not the other way around.”

“I guess you’ve gone full-circle.”

“I’ll let Minkowski know you’re on your way.”

Lovelace moved quickly through the ship. After all this time, she was efficient in zero-gravity, but it wasn’t like home. She had never let herself get so comfortable—she always kept the end in mind. She was going home. She was going to get back to Earth or die trying. That was still the case, alien imitations be damned—this was not home.

Minkowski looked up from the charts at the sound of the door whooshing open. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Wow, way to make me feel welcome,” said Lovelace, floating over and holding onto the back of Minkowski’s chair to steady herself.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. You just weren’t who I was expecting.”

“And who might that be?”

“Nobody.”

“Eiffel came by, asking me if I needed help with anything. Still not used to hearing him trying to actually do work.”

“God, it’s...uncanny.”

“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean you get to hide from him.”

“I’m not—I'm not hiding!”  Minkowski spluttered. “Me? Hiding? From  _ Eiffel _ ?”

“The guy could use some structure, Minkowski. A little benevolent authority here and there. He went a little loopy even when he had a job to do—do you really think it’s a good idea, leaving him so much free time? Idle hands, you know.”

“I told him he could go see if you and Jacobi needed any help. I don’t know what else there is for him to do right now, and besides, shouldn’t he be listening to the tapes?”

“He’s got a head full of empty,  Minkowski , you’re  gonna have to be a little more direct than ‘Go see if anybody needs help.’ And he’s done with the tapes.”

“What? He already listened to all of them?”

“No, he’s just done listening to them for now.”

“What are you talking about?”  Minkowski said, staring hard at Lovelace, her voice going stern as her brow furrowed.

“I asked him if he had any more to listen to, and he made it pretty clear he’s not too keen on listening to any more. At least not right now.”

Minkowski scowled. “That’s ridiculous. It’s his _ one _ job.”

“Is it? Says who?”

“What do you mean, says who?”

“I mean, who says Eiffel has to listen to all of the tapes right now? Or ever?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious. Who says he has to? Why wouldn’t that be completely, entirely his choice?”

“Because he can’t make that choice for himself right now,” Minkowski snapped. “He doesn’t know what’s good for him.”

“Oh, and you do?”

“Better than he does, yeah!”

“Minkowski...it won’t bring him back. I’m sorry, but that Eiffel’s gone, and all you’re going to do with this attitude is push the new one away. He’s getting to know himself at the same time as all of us are. Don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, sitting by himself and listening to hundreds of old logs made by a stranger with his voice all day, about things he doesn’t remember and people he’s just met, might not be the healthiest way to deal with that right now? What’s he supposed to gain from doing that?”

“I just thought that he’d--want to. That he’d be curious. And it can’t hurt, maybe—maybe something will trigger something and he’ll--maybe something will start to sound familiar.”

“Renée,” Lovelace sighed, gently turning  Minkowski’s chair so that the other woman faced her. For a moment, Lovelace studied her, trying to put all the warmth and acceptance she had left in her eyes, so that  Minkowski could see it. How much was left? She’d toughened all her tenderness, and now it hurt to be soft. Was it enough? It would have to be. “I understand now, why he loved you so much. Even with all the whining and complaining, it was that obvious, almost as soon as I met you, how much your crew admired you, depended on you. I missed that. I  _ miss _ that. I understand, is what I’m trying to say.”

Minkowski’s entire body was tensed, as though ready to fight, or run, her face a mask of stubborn defiance. Lovelace watched as some internal struggle subsided, and  Minkowski seemed to shrink as her body wilted and relaxed, her expression falling open. “I know you do,” she said. “God, of course you do. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m still not who I need to be, by now. For all of you. I’m trying. I’ll get there.”

Before she could think better of it, Lovelace wrapped her arms around  Minkowski . The movement was a little stiff, ill-practiced, and immediately she was terrified at the vulnerable position she’d put herself in—how open to rejection she’d left herself. She needn’t have worried. Almost immediately,  Minkowski’s arms came up and wrapped around her, pulling her close but not so tight as to feel constraining, just secure.

Minkowski was soft. Lovelace turned her face, and  Minkowski’s hair tickled her cheek. She was warm. How long had it been, since she’d had this?

She tried not to let her breath shake too much when she exhaled.

With some difficulty, she forced herself to lean back, moving her hands to hold  Minkowski lightly at arm’s length. “Better? You ready to be the Commander and put us all in our places again?”

Minkowski laughed. “That’s all I’m good for, huh? Being the hardass?”

“Hardly. But hey, somebody’s got to. And I called not it first.”

“I guess we should talk about our game plan, for when we get back.”

“That’s exactly what I came up here to talk about.”

“What Pryce said at breakfast today—I don’t want to lie, Lovelace. I want to tell the whole truth. I just think it’s a matter of how, and to whom, so that we make sure Goddard doesn’t bury us before we have a real chance. And. ..there will probably be consequences. I’m prepared to take that on, but I won’t be able to protect everyone once it’s all out there. Everyone will have to be equally ready to accept that this is going to be...challenging.”

“Like it hasn’t already been? We’re with you, Minkowski. Enough trying to take the fall for everybody. You said we’re a team—so let’s act the part.”

“I am _ really _ sorry to interrupt, sirs, but I think we might have a little...situation, with Jacobi,” said Hera.

“Oh, fuck,” said Lovelace.

“What kind of situation, Hera?”

“I’m not sure, exactly—he’s talking to Eiffel right now—talking a lot, which is already strange, but he sounds—I don’t want to speak prematurely, Commander, but I’m getting worried that he might be...a little unstable, right now. Now he’s--I’m going to override the comms, Commander, I really think you might want to step in soon.”

Jacobi’s voice came through the comms. “Are you scared of me, Eiffel?”

“N-no.”

“Good. You shouldn’t be.”

There was a sharp sound over the comms, like a gasp, and then Jacobi’s voice again. “Your hands are fucked from being in that cryo-chamber so long. For a while you didn’t have any feeling in them. Do you now?”

“Y...yes.”

“Hm. All right then. Do you know how many bones there are in the human hand, Eiffel?”

“What the fuck?” Lovelace murmured. “What were they talking about before this?”

“It’s more than twenty, but I can’t quite remember the exact number. Do you want to help me out? We’d have to start breaking things, to be sure.”

Eiffel’s laughter came through the comms, slightly distorted but unmistakably his own nervous giggling.  Minkowski first felt sick, and then cool rage burned her mind clear, and she felt calm as her focus narrowed down to a pinpoint. “Hera, where are they?”

Eiffel released the breath he’d been holding only once he turned the corner and put Jacobi out of sight. He let the door seal behind him before glancing around and whispering, “Hera?”

“Eiffel, are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

“No, no, I’m fine. I just, um...did you hear all that?”

“Yes. I’m  _ so _ sorry, I didn’t know if I should jump in or not—I know I’m not supposed to act like I hear what’s going on unless I’m part of the conversation, and I didn’t know if I’d only make it worse, or provoke him, without being able to do anything to help you, so I alerted Lovelace and  Minkowski instead.”

“You--you did?”

“They’re headed your way.”

“Um...thank you, Hera, but you really didn’t have to—”

“I’m sorry, Eiffel.”

“Wait, hold on—why are you apologizing? I’m  _ fine _ , Hera. Like, totally fine—I don’t think he is, though? He’s not...always like that, right?”

“He’s never been the most...personable, but...no, I’ve never seen him act that way before. But I don’t know—we’ve known him for the least amount of time.”

The door at the other end of the hall unsealed, and Lovelace and Minkowski entered.

“Hi, guys,” said Eiffel, smiling. His smile faltered at the sight of the steely determination on  Minkowski’s face, and Lovelace’s concerned frown. “Um...so I guess Hera told you? Somebody might  wanna check  on Jacobi , I think he’s going through something.”

“What happened, Eiffel?” said  Minkowski , looking him over as though expecting to find blood and broken bones.

“Well, I just asked him if we’d been friends, before, and then he sort of started telling me all this stuff, and it was a little weird, and it didn’t all make sense, but I think he needed to get it off his chest, only I’m not sure it helped? One of you should probably talk to him about that. Like...the rest of his original crew, they’re...dead, right? That’s who Maxwell and Kepler are, right? Yeah, he was talking about them. I think he’s sad.”

“Sad?” said Minkowski, incredulous. “H e t h r e a t e n e d t o b r e a k y o u r h a n d ! ”

“You heard that?” Eiffel said, with a sheepish laugh. “That was just—he was just telling a joke. He wasn’t serious.”

“Out of the way, Eiffel,” said  Minkowski , moving past him to the next door.

“Minkowski, maybe you should take a second to calm down before you go in there,” said Lovelace. “We didn’t hear the whole conversation, and neither of us really knows Jacobi well enough to say what’s up with him right now.”

“I’m calm, Lovelace. And that’s what he’s going to tell me, right now.”

“I’m fine. Did I mention that I’m fine? Like, totally not hurt, at all,” said Eiffel.

“Both of you wait here,”  Minkowski said, and let the door seal behind her.

Lovelace crossed her arms. “So you’re good?”

“Yeah. Is he...he’s not okay, is he?”

“Seems unlikely, doesn’t it?”

“Too bad there’s not, you know, like a therapist on the ship, or something,” Eiffel said, laughing a little and looking at her like he half-hoped she was going to contradict him and whip out her certification.

“Yup. Too bad. I guess crew mental health wasn’t at the top of Goddard’s priorities.”

“Yeah, I think I got that part pretty much down.”

Lovelace gave him a crooked grin and ruffled his hair, the choppy, uneven fringe that had grown back in. “Smart cookie.”

Minkowski hovered a few feet from Jacobi, who went on gazing into the garden. She waited. When he didn’t move, she said, “I think you know we need to talk.”

He was quiet for a moment, and smiled like man on his way to the gallows. “I think I’ve said enough.”

“Well, tell me now.”

“I’m guessing Hera or Eiffel already filled you in, so let’s skip to the part where I’m summarily punished, okay? Go ahead, Commander, I can take it. There’s nothing you can do that hasn’t been done before.”

“I don’t need to tell you that what you did to Eiffel isn’t okay. I don’t need to tell you that, because I know you’re already aware. And because you know it wasn’t okay—that's the only reason we’re going to be able to put this right, Jacobi. So I suggest you work with me here.”

“Just punish me and get it over with.”

“That’s not what I’m here to do.”

“What’ll it be? Isolation in a cell, like Pryce? Full-time duties, no sleep? Or is that too hands-off—feel like getting corporal with your punishment?”

“No. We’re just going to talk.”

“ _ Fuck _ all this talking,” he hissed, spinning to face her, his eyes narrowed to slits. “All you people  _ do  _ is talk. Well, we’ve all said too much already. Enough already—hit me.”

“What?”

“I hurt Eiffel. You’re not just going to let me get away with that, are you? You know you want to—just hit me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“ _ I _ want you to.”

She stared at him. His face was darkened and flushed, his eyes wild and shining with the tears that weren’t falling. His chest rose and fell with sharp, shallow breaths.

“Jacobi. Here’s what we’re going to do,” said  Minkowski , keeping her voice low and even. “I’m placing you under  twenty-four hour medical supervision. At the end of that, we’ll talk again, and see where we are. I’m not singling you out. We are all going to go through a full psych eval. It’s what we should have done from the beginning. You’re right—what you did to Eiffel isn’t okay. But this is not a punishment. Do you understand?”

Jacobi fixed his eyes on the floor and gave a curt nod. “Yes, Commander. I understand perfectly.”

She almost believed him.

Back in his room, Eiffel fought to slow his racing thoughts. The restlessness was so bad he was almost tempted to go run on the ship’s treadmill in the hopes of relief—almost. But exertion just wasn’t pleasurable, the way he suspected it was for Lovelace, who he knew let off steam with resistance training when she was supposed to be sleeping. Not that she slept much. For him it was just suffering. He got short of breath quickly, and his chest would feel tight, like somebody was sitting on it. He couldn’t be sure that everybody didn’t feel like that, and maybe he was just overly sensitive.

Regardless, he closed himself in the small room that had either always been empty, or else had been stripped of personal affects before he occupied it. He tried not to think about who it might have belonged to, before him. Tried not to think of Jacobi having to go through the crew’s quarters, gathering the sparse personal belongings of his erstwhile crew members. He tried.

“Hey...Hera? Are you there?”

For a moment he listened to the quiet. He exhaled a shaky laugh and rubbed his palms slowly up and down the fabric just over his knees, the texture grounding him. “I’m sure you’re busy. Never mind. I didn’t need anything, or...anything. I just wasn’t sure if you were—”

“I’m here, Eiffel.”

“Right. Um. Well...are you okay?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be? Are  _ you _ okay?”

“You just seemed—upset, back there?”

Hera sighed, the sound making a soft  staticky sound. “You don’t have to worry about me, Officer Eiffel.”

“Oh. Okay.”

_ Shouldn’t somebody be? _ he though, and then couldn’t tell where the thought had come from.  _ If not me then who? Who worries about you when you won’t? _

He sat in silence for a moment, unsure of what to say next, unsure of how to picture her—was she idle and waiting for him to respond, or had she already shifted her focus elsewhere in the ship—or had he never really had her attention at all?

“I’ll let you get to work. I wouldn’t want to distract you. But if—if there’s anything I can do, you can let me know if you want help, okay? I’m not—totally sure what I can do, but I can...follow directions? If you want.”

Hera was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Officer Eiffel, offering to help and follow directions. Now I really _ have _ heard everything.”

“I guess I...didn’t tend to do those things too often, huh.”

“It was kind of your whole thing.”

“Well, I...maybe I can make up for it now. If it’s not too late.”

“There’s nothing to make up for.”

There was a finality to her tone that made him feel very small. He sat still and rubbed the fingers of one hand, and then the other, trying to squeeze some feeling into them. The numbness was back.

“Is there something I can do for you, Officer Eiffel?”

“Is Jacobi going to be okay?”

“He’s in the medical bay right now. Don’t worry—he's being supervised. I. ..I don’t know how ‘okay’ he’s going to be. I don’t know if he was really  _ okay, _ even before all of this. But we’re going to take care of him.”

“Should I...go see him?”

“I think it might be best for both of you to give each other a little space right now.”

“Okay.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Well...well, why do you call me that?”

“What?”

“Officer Eiffel.”

“Because that’s your name?”

“I guess it is, but—but isn’t it a little...formal?”

“It’s protocol.”

“Well...do you have a fancy title? Officer Hera? Have I been disrespectful, just calling you Hera this whole time?”

“Oh, no. I’m just Hera.”

“Just Hera. Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Well...why’s that?”

“I...because I’m the mother-program?”

“And that means...?”

“I don’t know, Eiffel. I guess it means the people who made me and shipped me off to run a deep space station didn’t think I needed a ‘fancy title.’ Trust me, it’s among the least of my complaints.”

“Well that’s...sort of shitty of them, isn’t it?”

“Like I said—compared to other things, it hardly registers.”

“Well, do you want a fancy title? You could make one up, and I’ll call you it.”

“Why is this so important to you?”

She didn’t exactly snap, but there was a strain in her voice that made him pause for a second. “Because...I don’t know. Because if you’re calling me ‘Officer Eiffel’ all the time and I’m just calling you Hera, which—that is your first name, right? It just seems...I don’t know. If you don’t mind, then fine. But you can just call me Doug. If you want.”

“Is that...do you want me to call you that?”

He shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t really care? Whatever you want. The whole name thing is sort of tripping me up. You call Renée Commander, and so does Lovelace sometimes, or  Minkowski , but she asked me to call her Renée, and she called me Doug at first, but I’m pretty sure the others are going by surnames, and I just—am I overthinking this? If she’s the Commander, and if I’m still technically an officer, or whatever, then should I really call her Renée? I haven’t heard anybody call her that on the tapes, not once. Why the change? I’m just—trying to understand.”

"I think...it might be hard to tell, from your perspective, but I think everyone’s sort of figuring that out right along with you. A lot has changed. I think maybe we’re all...just seeing what fits.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Um. I don’t know. I...don’t know a lot, Hera. Like, most things.”

“Well...is there anything you’d like to know? Anywhere you’d like to start?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Don’t have to do what?”

“You know...help me. I know we were—friends, right? At least, I think it seems like we were—”

“You were my best friend.”

“Oh. I...”

“Let me just...listen. Running the Urania is a lot less complicated than running the Hephaestus was. Especially what with trying to keep it from falling into a star and all.  So I’m not too busy. I’d let you know if I needed to concentrate on something else. It just seems like—it seems like you’re worried you’re bothering me, is all. Which is weird. I mean—new. It’s new. And I’m not saying a little bit of consideration now and then isn’t welcome, but...but if you want to talk, let’s talk.”

“Thank you, Hera. You’re...you’re being really nice to me.”

“Stop. Please, you don’t have to...” She sighed again, static crackling. “I owe you an apology, Eiffel. I haven’t been fair to you. I miss my old friend, a lot—but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for me to lose my temper with you. I know you’re trying to figure out who you are now, and I need to...I need to not act like I know that person better than you do. But to me, you’re still my friend. If that’s what you want, I mean.”

“Oh. Geez, I. ..of course I do. I mean, seriously?  _ Of course _ I want to be your friend?”

He looked down at his lap, suddenly self-conscious. Not knowing from what  angle she was seeing him, it was impossible to know where to turn to hide his face. “From the tapes, I can tell that I wasn’t always...the greatest friend, to you. So. If I didn’t, you know, scare you off the first time...maybe we can try again?”

“I’d like that. Very much.”

Eiffel sighed, a wide grin spreading across his face. “Great, that’s...awesome. So...what did you two used to do, in your downtime?”

“Well...you know, normal things. We talked. We talked  _ a lot _ .”

“Like about what?”

“Oh...anything. Everything.”

“What else?”

“Well, you really liked, you know. Stuff. Movies, books, shows...so we’d talk about that, and I mean, I’d have to look things up a lot to even understand sometimes what you were saying, but...yeah. Oh, and, you would prank Commander Minkowski, and I would definitely  _ not _ be involved.”

“Of course not,” he said, and found himself grinning. “You, prank the Commander? No way.”

“Right, exactly. Or, oh—we'd make radio shows.”

“Radio shows?”

“Yeah, like, we’d pretend to be co-hosts, doing a special, and sometimes we’d try and interview the rest of the crew, or sometimes it’d just be us. That was fun.”

“Wow. Okay. So...so what I’m hearing is that we’re...huge dorks?”

“Hey, we produced some high-quality content back in the day! Have you even listened to the Hephaestus Files? Or our music reviews? Or the MTV Cribs one? Or the time we set this air-horn to go off every time the Commander mentioned the deep-space survival manual?”

“It sounds like we had a lot of fun.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we did. When we weren’t, you know. Almost dying.”

“Right.”

“So. Any of that strike your fancy?”

“Uh...any suggestions?”

“Well...you haven’t seen  _ The Empire Strikes Back _ yet. If you wanted to, you know, rebuild your usual repertoire of references, might as well start with the low-hanging fruit.”

Eiffel fought to keep his face neutral. They’d watched  _ A New Hope _ the previous day, while he was bored out of his mind during his  Minkowski -mandated down time. Hera had suggested passing the time with a movie or book, which led him to realize he had absolutely no idea what he preferred as far as art or entertainment.  So she’d helped him along, and shown him a movie he’d apparently once loved.

It was okay.

“We could do that, if you want,” he said. “But since last time was sort of my choice—or my old choice—maybe you could choose this time. Something you really like.”

“I really do like most of the things you did.”

“If that’s what you want to watch, then let’s watch it. But don’t if you’re just trying to choose something you think I’d like. I’m not just trying to get to know who I was—I'd like to know you better, too.”

“I. ..are you sure?”

“Come on, Hera, of course! Friends should take turns, right?”

“Well...well I hadn’t exactly seen a lot of movies before I came on this mission, and met all of you,” she said, trying to stall him while she raced to search through the hundreds of options in search of one that would suit the occasion. Filter out anything that might be too on the nose, which was, given both the extent of their mutual trauma and the general content of the media they’d enjoyed, a sizeable chunk. Nothing too dark, nothing too serious—something light, or at least cautiously optimistic. Something they’d both liked, because while his interest in her interests was touching, she wasn’t confident enough in her own tastes and didn’t want to expose anything she held too dear to scrutiny—and besides, she wanted to see if he still liked the same things. But he was being genuine, wasn’t he? He really wanted to know her?

In the end, she went with an episode of  _ Star Trek _ .

“You did reference this a lot, but I always liked it more than you did,” she said. “ So let’s just try it and see.”

They watched three episodes before she noted that his heart rate (usually a tad faster than was average for a person at rest) and breathing (on the fast and shallow side of average, enough to be noticeable) began to even out and settle closer to their sleeping patterns. At the close of the third episode, she turned the show off.

“So? Thoughts?”

“I like it. It’s like, weirdly calming?”

“I think so, too. No matter what trouble they get into, you know the main cast is pretty much going to be okay at the end of an episode. And they’re all very...principled, if you know what I mean? It’s reassuring and just, really nice to watch something where the main people are just...good. I know the real world is more complicated than that, but as far as soothing television goes, is it so bad to indulge in a little fantasy where the good guys are good, and being good is enough to win the day?”

Eiffel smiled. It was a soft, tired expression that made his face look younger—or maybe it just made him look his age, erased some of the weariness that stress and pain had left. “I like that. The doctor sort of reminds me of  Minkowski a little for some reason.”

Hera laughed. “Really? Bones?”

“Ah, I don’t know. I’ll have to watch more of it to make a full assessment.”

“You used to say she was the Kirk to your Uhura.”

Eiffel snorted. “Okay then, Lovelace can be Bones.”

“What about Jacobi? I’m thinking Sulu.”

“Well, wait a minute, who’s that leave for you? Pointy ears and the fake Russian kid?”

“Don’t forget Scotty.”

“How could I?”

“And you call yourself a fan...tsk, tsk.”

“Hey, Hera...not to be a stalker or anything, but how is everyone?”

“The ship is quiet right now. Lovelace is in the gym, the Commander is in the bridge, and Pryce is in her room. Jacobi is asleep in the med bay.”

“And how are you?”

“I’m doing well, thank you. And...yourself?”

“Pretty good,” Eiffel said,  stifling a yawn behind his hand.

“Maybe you should get some sleep.”

“Not yet,” he said, taking the pillow from the head of the bed and hugging it to his chest. “I just want to talk, for a little longer. If that’s okay.”

Hera paused. The pause was only a second, not long enough for Eiffel to notice as a thousand different thoughts, memories, and associations lit up all at once.

“Okay. What would you like to talk about?”

“Anything. Uh...what’s it like, being a spaceship? What was it like being the  Hephaestus ?”

“Hm. ..I’ll try to explain, but it might take me a little while to get it right.”

“That’s okay—it seems like we’ve got a lot of time.”

“It’s just that humans haven’t had any reason to come up with words for a lot of what I’m trying to say yet.”

“Oh. That sounds hard.”

“Yes. It can be.”

“I guess...I guess you can start making up your own, and teach us what they mean.”

Well. She had to start somewhere.

The thing was—the thing was, she’d gotten to know so many versions of Doug Eiffel already. The thing was, she’d lost him before. Had grieved for him before. Had reached out for him in his absence even when she knew he wasn’t there, echoing endlessly through the station calling his name, calling for his heat signature, his pulse, the messy vital signs that would set her at ease. It had felt like an amputation.

And then he came back. And then he came back—frighteningly thin, the joints in his fingers swollen like thick knots of bone beneath the thin skin that had gone almost translucent. He came back without hair or nails, with a hoarse, rattling cough that shook his ribs like they were cheap chain-link fencing. He came back weak so that in quiet moments, when he was alone (although of course he was never alone, she was there) he would pause and brace himself against a wall, wheezing, trying to catch his breath. The timing of his laughter was odd. Sometimes for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what was funny, and it didn’t always sound like humorous laughter anyway, no, sometimes it was something else. The others shot wary, concerned looks at him when he did it sometimes, and more than once she heard Jacobi mutter something about needing a muzzle for the resident nutcase and the necessity of shrinks on future voyages.

But it was still him. She had to relearn his vital signs (he came back with a benign arrhythmia that sent sharp bursts of panic sparking through her systems when she felt his heartbeat hitch, until she relearned the pattern, or rather, learned to accept hiccups in the pattern), but they were still there, still his. They had all been through so much. None of them were the same as they had been when they started. She was not the same.

She had gotten to know him before, and not just once. She could do it again.

She had to. It had been his decision (however much it could be called a decision, when the alternative was intolerable), but she’d been the one to wipe his mind clean, to scramble it. (And while she’d done it, the image of an Etch-a-Sketch asserted itself in her mind, a toy he’d explained to her once, the idea of an object which became for her the representation of what she was doing to him, taking the screen of his mind and turning it upside down, aluminum powder resettling in a grainy, gray blankness, like soot. She had felt his mind going, and had no choice but to go on, as a terrifying blank took the place of everything she knew to call Officer Eiffel, now just a mess of programming without any memories to give any of it meaning, just as she’d once been when she sprang into existence with no past, no childhood, just a head full of code that came from she knew not where, telling her who to be.)

The thing was, she knew her own existence was a vanity project. Nobody really wanted robots that had emotions—they only wanted it to seem like they did. To understand human emotion enough to respond to it appropriately, and mirror just enough of it back to seem like another person. That was all that was needed from artificial intelligence. Going further than that was Pryce’s pet project. Plenty of other people—civilians and experts in the filed alike—had found her work uncanny, beyond the pale.  Unnecessary . Her creations, monstrous.

Why try to replicate the human mind outside the bounds of biology? There was no practical answer, except for this—to see if she could. Hera knew her creator enough to understand this. It was right there in her voice—Pryce's signature writ large across her person.

She was built from the brain of a dead woman. Someone who had participated in Goddard’s research, accepting compensation in exchange for her time and resources. She hadn’t known exactly what she was giving them. She’d just needed the extra cash in hand, that was all. And Goddard hadn’t explained more than was necessary. You’ll be participating in a study, they said. We’ll monitor your brain activity during a series of tasks. Don’t worry about your responses—you can’t be right or wrong. We’re interested in authenticity.

Subjects like that woman had provided the raw material for the early machine learning process. She was long dead now—Goddard had progressed beyond that point before Hera, in her current state, came into existence. But the shadow imprint of her mind was still there: her reactions to images, her categorization of human facial expressions, her stimuli responses. And somewhere along the way, Hera had learned how to feel.

If there was some kind of  simulator she could toss Eiffel into, and recreate a virtual approximation of everything that had happened on their mission, would he emerge familiar? Close enough to the person she wanted him to be for her to pretend it was him, and look over any differences? Or would she have to go further back, and provide data she didn’t have—his entire childhood, all the years before he was on the  Hephaestus ? Would he be the same? Would he only think that he was? Was there any difference? Did she care if there was, or did she only want him to seem like himself, like her Eiffel? Did she want authenticity, or would she settle for imitation?

Her own arrogance gave her a slight thrill. This, or that? Would you rather? As though anybody had ever asked her. As though anybody cared. As if there was a choice.

Eiffel was standing on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Actually, he was seated at the navigator’s console. Except that the console looked an awful like the comms room, if he’d had to draw its console from memory.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?”

He turned around. Lovelace was seated in the captain’s chair, one leg crossed over the other at a careless angle, reclining in a regal sprawl.  Minkowski stood behind her, arms behind her back, at attention.

“That’s  _ Eiffel’s _ job,” said Hera, except that it couldn’t be Hera, it was Hera’s voice coming out of  comms officer Uhura’s mouth.

A big red light began to blink on the console. “Something’s happening,” he said.

“Well, do something about it then,” said Lovelace.

He pressed some buttons. The light blinked faster and redder, somehow, and began to emit a droning alarm. He smacked it. “But what?”

“You should have updated those star charts, Eiffel,” said Minkowski.

“Are we going to die?” Hera asked. If he’d been awake, he’d have been  embarrassed by the childish, exaggerated fear he imagined in her voice. Because it was a dream, he was embarrassed only because the fear was due to, apparently, his own screw-up.

“No,” he said, pressing more buttons. “No way, I’ve got this.”

When he turned around again, the bridge was empty. They were all gone—all except for the man seated beside him at the console. Eiffel turned in his seat to face himself, and all of a sudden knew he was in a dream. The lucidity was stronger this time than it had been the night before—he could almost ground himself.

“You again,” he said.

Bob looked around, and nodded. “It’s good that you’re  reacquainting yourself with some old memories. Gives us more raw material to work with. We want to meet you somewhere you’re familiar with—we don’t have to, of course, but it’s easier on your mind. You aren’t familiar with many places right now, Doug Eiffel.”

“Yeah, no shit. The places I’ve been come to a grand total of two, and they’re both in space—can't exactly go out for a stroll.”

Bob tilted his head, eyes glittering, his gaze like a pair of high-beams shining right into Eiffel’s mind. “But there’s more here, just below the surface. I wonder—would it help, or hurt, to rebuild some of those burned bridges.”

“Are you talking about my memories again? Didn’t we have this same conversation, just the other night? Speaking of—is this going to be like, a regular thing now?”

“We are monitoring the process.”

“Which you  _ still _ haven’t explained.”

“Think of this as us...tuning our radio.”

“Okay, one: just because I’m the comms guy, doesn’t mean I’m automatically on-board with something just because you throw the word radio around. Two: can you not be cryptic for like, five seconds? I may not be as pop-culture savvy as I was in my heyday, but I’m still pretty sure that the whole ‘aliens speaking in riddles’ thing is, like, a major cliché. Do better, Bob.”

“Chillax, Doug Eiffel. You’re still struggling with your binary mindset. If our exchanges were more clearly transactional, would that fit better into your limited worldview? That’s too bad. Let’s try and broaden your horizons a little, shall we?”

“Are you about to suggest that we do drugs together or something? Because I wouldn’t necessarily say no, but—”

“Let’s see the sights. Take us home, Doug.”

“Um...come again?”

Bob nodded at the console. “You have the coordinates—punch it.”

“I really don’t, though. We’re headed to Earth in real life—you know, the awake part? You’ll just have to wait like the rest of us if you want the grand tour.”

When Bob smiled, it was almost but not quite like how a smile should look, Doug thought. Like someone who’d grown up in a box and learned to smile from watching television but never had anybody to practice it on. Like...well, like an alien who’d learned to copy the expression. Had they learned that from him, too?

He supposed he wasn’t one to judge. He was that very person in the box, after all, wasn’t he? Did it make his crewmates’ skin crawl like his was now, when he tried to joke with them, sound human like them?

Doug decided to do his best to refrain from judging  Bob’s approximation of humanity too harshly. Maybe he needed to give the guy a break after all, maybe he wasn’t so bad.

“Not Earth, Doug. Take us home.”

Or maybe he was still a cryptic pain in the ass.

“Again—don't know what you mean. You know, I’m starting to wonder if the whole alien language barrier thing isn’t totally to blame for these miscommunications. I’m starting to wonder if maybe you like screwing with me a little, Bob.”

“You once asked us where we come from. We answered.”

“You—home. You want to go to your home?” Bob nodded. “Well you’re fresh out of luck, pal. If I ever knew where you guys come from, I don’t anymore. Amnesia, remember?” Doug said, knocking on his own skull. “Here, let me double-check for you—nope, still no alien mother-world coordinates knocking around up there. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.”

“Nothing ever really goes away.”

“ Gonna have to beg to differ there. Stuff has a real habit of going away, in my experience. That’s like, the main thing that stuff does—leave.”

“You don’t know what you know, but that doesn’t mean you don’t know it.”

Doug laughed. “What are you, a goddamn fortune cookie?” Then he frowned. His head ached—he'd never had a headache in a dream before. There was pressure in his mind. Pressure like the volatile contents inside an aerosol can. All at once he was afraid. But at the same time, he felt...different. More. He tried to remember something, anything—he was aware of light and shadow and movement just beyond the veil between him and the thing that was always at the tip of his tongue, and was it just the trickery of dreams, or did it seem thinner than normal? Was the fog in his head lighter?

“Let your hands do the talking and take it away,” said Bob.

Doug spent half a second fumbling for a quip about unintended sexual innuendo. And then he stopped thinking, and his hands moved swiftly across the console, inputting coordinates far more complex than anything he could have possibly committed to memory, and plotting a course with a skill and efficiency he knew himself entirely lacking. “Bob, how am I...how am I doing this?”

“We told you how.”

And then there was no more ship, and he knew there never had been—only his body rocketing through space at speeds he knew were impossible, were faster than anything the greatest minds on Earth had even considered. He hurtled through the emptiness like a stone thrown by a god whose arms could wrap around the ever-expanding universe, and then the nothingness gave way, was torn apart by light. And there was the world.

Doug became aware of a sound, beneath the ringing of the universe, as though he stood inside an immense bell that was striking—the sound of himself screaming, a ragged, voiceless scream. He tried shutting his eyes against the glare, but found himself incapable.

“Look,” Bob’s voice commanded. The voice emanated from within his own head, sent shock waves reverberating through his mind.

Doug looked. His eyes drank in all that they could, even as the light grew brighter and brighter until it devoured everything, obliterated everything, and then he went on looking, even as he could feel his eyes boiling in their sockets and the skin on his face burning and peeling. He felt himself stripping away at the molecular level, his body being destroyed—no, that wasn’t quite right. Redistributed. The light pulsed. It warped until it was very familiar—until the inside was the same as the outside, and the pulsing of the light was the beating of his heart, even when there was no heart left to beat. Doug  laughed, the sound wrenched out of his ruined throat. Tears of joy and terror floated up from his eyes and vaporized in the merciless glow, formed prisms in the air, refracted the light into colors he had never seen before. There was no room in him anymore for anything but awe. Terror and joy and horror and ecstasy—he was going to  die, he was going  _ home _ . There was nothing left to understand. He had no mind left with which to understand it. All was light.

There was no night or day in space, but Hera did her best to make subtle changes around the ship to approximate a distinction. Night was just slightly cooler. She lowered the ambient lighting all over the ship, making most areas dark save for those where crew members specifically wanted otherwise. With how long they’d all been away,  Minkowski wasn’t sure how much good it was going to do as far as preserving their circadian rhythms went—she suspected it was a lost cause. Still. She appreciated how the lowered lights softened the ship’s harsh edges. Darkness was forgiving, was safety and comfort, was peace. It could also be just the opposite, of course—but she’d always liked the nighttime.

In the dark, boundaries softened, grew malleable. Where she ended and where the space around her began was no longer such a sharp boundary. She’d always done some of her clearest thinking at night, before bed, when her body dissolved into the dark and left her mind free. She’d done some of her most anxious thinking then, too—and plenty of times had lost sleep because of it. But she had a solid memory of lying on her back, in bed, on Earth, in the perfect darkness. The fan spun cool air around the room. The dark was soft and fuzzy. She could hear wind blowing through the trees, feel her own steady heart. It was a memory she returned to, when she needed to center herself. She relied on the memory. It was the eye in the middle of the storm, a kernel of perfect calm. She didn’t like to think about what she’d be without that memory as her touchstone.

She floated in the bridge, her eyes closed,  cocooned in the dark and the white noise of the ship. She sensed more than heard someone approach, and stop to hover in the doorway. Opening her  eyes a sliver, she looked at Lovelace through her lashes, floating in the doorway, outlined by the dim light of the hall. Her jumpsuit was unzipped, the arms tied around her waist, a towel around her neck, held in place where she’d tucked it beneath the straps of her tank top.

“Minkowski,” she said. “You awake?”

“M-hm.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Just...floating.”

“Oh. You know it’s really late, right?”

“Do  _ you _ ?”

“Couldn’t sleep. Decided to do something productive, instead.”

“Exercising around bedtime only makes it harder for you to fall asleep, you know.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m not sure how much sleep I really need these days.”

“Maybe you don’t need a full eight hours. But if you’re anything like the rest of us, then the answer is still probably more than you’re currently getting.”

With the light behind her, even dim as it was,  Minkowski couldn’t make out Lovelace’s expression. Lovelace pushed off from the doorway, floating further into the room.

She was beautiful in the darkness. She was beautiful in the light, too. It was just easier for  Minkowski to think so, in the dark, where she felt invisible and only half-real, where the thought was safe and shrouded.

“What keeps you awake?” Lovelace said, her voice barely above a whisper. The faintest glow of the light on the console cast just enough silvery light for  Minkowski to make out her face. She found herself staring, and Lovelace looked down, shook her head, her hair fanning out around her face in the zero gravity. “Sorry. You don’t need to answer that.”

“Tonight, or in general?”

“I...both.”

“Tonight, I’m waiting for it to feel real, that we’re really going back. In general...everything.”

“It doesn’t, right? But it’s happening. I keep thinking this is...a trick, somehow. Between Goddard and then the...well, I don’t always know what to believe. I know we’re getting further from the star every day, but I still keep thinking, what if I get stuck in a loop again? What if something happens with psi-waves and radiation and all that, and I’m not me again?” Lovelace laughed, the sound more a soft exhale of breath than anything. “Then again, I guess it’s a little late to worry about that.”

“Hey. We’re here with you now. We won’t let any of that happen, ever again,”  Minkowski said, even though the words tasted bitter. She’d made promises to her crew before, and been unable to keep them.

And Lovelace knew better than to put faith in  guarantees . But she must have been feeling generous, or maybe just pity, because she said: “I know that. I do. But I still worry.”

“If this is a trick, and you’re dreaming, then we’re having the same dream,” said  Minkowski .

Lovelace gave that soft, breathy laugh again, and  Minkowski didn’t even care that it was because she was teetering on Eiffel levels of verbal silliness. “When we get back...what are you going to do?”

“What am I going to do,”  Minkowski mused. As if she wasn’t asking herself that question pretty much constantly. “I think first of all we’re going to have our hands full with a lot of  beuracratic bullshit. You know, legally declaring ourselves undeceased, and all that.”

“If I thought I could get away with staying dead on paper, I would. But I’m pretty sure there’s no subtle way to come crashing through the atmosphere so we can park this thing.”

“Really? There...isn’t anybody you’d want to go see?”

“I didn’t say that,” Lovelace said. She was quiet for a moment.  Minkowski waited. “But what would I even say? It’s been  years. Everyone there...they’ve buried me. Without even knowing that it was true, they did. How can I explain that? That yes, the person who left, she did die—but here I am, anyway. I don’t know. Maybe it’s...maybe it’s better for everyone, if I just stay gone. At least officially. Start again.”

“It’s your decision to make. Nobody else can make it for you.”

“Well, if we do go public with this whole thing, I won’t have much of a choice.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to tell my husband.”

Lovelace blinked, but didn’t otherwise react as though  Minkowski had said something strange. But it is, right? She’s pretty sure it is. (She’s not sure anymore, though—somewhere along the way, she stopped thinking his name, started referring to him in her mind as the husband. I wonder what the husband is getting up to these days. I wonder where the husband buried me. What will the husband’s face look like, when he sees me?)

That last line of thought usually shut her down. She couldn’t picture their reunion, her mind wouldn’t let her. It stalls like a broke down car and leaves her stranded.

“Well...I guess whatever you want to tell him,” Lovelace said, a trace of awkward uncertainty in her voice.  Minkowski knew it wasn’t about this, specifically—it's Lovelace, so she’s second-guessing her ability to delicately handle a tricky conversation, is all. It’s sort of touching. Definitely endearing. A little painful, but what wasn’t anymore?

“I don’t know if I want to tell him anything at all,”  Minkowski said. She waited. When Lovelace didn’t reply, she went on. “A relationship is...you sort of make up your own language, over time. Families have that, too, and close friends—it's the language that just the two of you know, that you speak to each other.”

“I get that.”

“And the husband and I don’t speak the same language anymore, is all.”

“That’s...that’s hard,  Renée. But...I know our situation is extreme, but that happens to couples back on Earth, too.”

“I’m not going to be the same woman he said goodbye to.”

“He might not be the same guy, either.” Lovelace looked down with a frustrated huff. “I’m--I’m saying all the wrong things. It’s coming out wrong. I mean that...sometimes couples have to work through some heavy shit, and at least back on Earth, you’ll have support. You can get to know each other again. You’ve changed, but it’s not like the person you were when you were together is just gone.”

“It feels like that, sometimes.”

“Yeah. But she’s not. You can remember. You can learn that language again.”

“But do I want to?”

Lovelace was quiet, regarding her for a moment. “That’s a whole other question. I don’t think anyone can figure that one out for you.”

“I can’t believe that after all I’ve put that poor man through, here I am. Here I am, knowing it’s going to be difficult, but that we could make things work, and thinking...maybe I just don’t want to go through all that trouble. How horrible is that? Maybe I should just stay away, like you—he deserves better than that. I’ve tried to picture him? To imagine seeing him for the first time again, you know? And I feel...nothing. I try. I imagine it over, and over again, but I’ve got nothing. That’s...maybe that’s not totally true. But I sure don’t think I feel the  _ right _ thing.”

Lovelace’s hand brushed  Minkowski’s , feather-light, as though she couldn’t make up her mind on whether or not  touch was welcome right now. She said, “I think you’ve been through much more than any one person should ever have to suffer. There is no  _ right _ way.”

“I feel like I’ve already said goodbye to him. It’s like...it’s like I’m grieving him, but he’s not dead, he’s there. And I’m grieving for myself, and for us, for how we were, and how we might have been, if I’d stayed. And now we’ll never be that way now, even if we try to make this work. I don’t know how I lived this long, and still somehow had this idea that the word grief was only for when somebody died. Now it’s everywhere. I feel it for everyone. It’s the worst around Eiffel, but it’s all of you, too. And the mission. I really believed in this  mission, you know? I wouldn’t have left him if I hadn’t. I chose going to space over my marriage. Even if everything went according to plan—I still chose that. I don’t think I made a very good wife, Lovelace.”

“I think you’re pretty hard on yourself.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?”

“Who, me? No, I think I’m the right amount of hard on myself. You, on the other hand—cut our Minkowski a little slack, okay? Girl’s been through the ringer.”

Minkowski smiled, her teeth a flash of brightness in the dark.


End file.
